A couple of days late this week, That Gerund Is Funky looks at words and punctuation in the news: two stories out of Cambridge – about bad spelling and wordless poetry; the role of the exclamation mark; has poetry become irrelevant?; and some extinct slang.
English speakers are spoiled, having at their fingertips such a large, colorful vocabulary of words drenched in history, complexity, subtlety and nuance. But with their meanings constantly shifting and evolving, as they’re meant to do in a living language, many words are as slippery as fish: impossible to capture in the dictionary editor’s net with any definitive sense or identity, as their meanings twist and turn in the mouths and pens of their many users.
With that being said, it’s their complexities and subtleties — often an inherent part of the words’ very meanings — that are sometimes seen to be ebbing away, making their owners either increasingly confused with or newly synonymous with other similar words. Nuances are lost, definitions become more generalized, distinctions between words become more hazy, and a few words are even turning into contranyms, ie. the opposite of themselves (see Glossophilia’s earlier post on this topic).
Here are 28 words that are going through or have already undergone this transformation. Continue reading
Why punctuation matters (Somewhere in America, Memorial Day, May 26)
TGIF: Language in the news and on the web this week includes a spelling bee tie, a poetic birthday celebration in Siberia; some words that mean the opposite of themselves; some foreign words that are untranslatable; voting words into the dictionary; a very fashionable pronunciation guide; and a war against euphemism and cliche.
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Two boys won this year’s National Scripps Spelling Bee. As CBS News reported, “Sriram Hathwar of Painted Post, New York, and Ansun Sujoe of Fort Worth, Texas, shared the title after a riveting final-round duel in which they nearly exhausted the 25 designated championship words. After they spelled a dozen words correctly in a row, they both were named champions.”
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To mark the 215th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Pushkin on June 6, one of Russia’s greatest poets, the Siberian city Novosibirsk is going to offer free rides on its underground to anyone who can recite at least two verses from any of his Pushkin’s poems. The BBC reports on this poetic event.
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Here’s one of the reasons I love mental_floss: today it gives us 25 words that are their own opposites – otherwise known as contronyms. “Because of the agency’s oversight, the corporation’s behavior was sanctioned.” Confused? Yeah … That’s what contranyms can do. (And even contranym doesn’t know how to spell itself, let alone decide what it means.)
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Do you think adorkable or duckface should be legitimate, dictionary-worthy words? Well, if you feel strongly enough either way, you can have your say. According to a report in The Economist, Collins Dictionary is going to add a word to its dictionary based on votes collected through Twitter.
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Is your inability to pronounce designers’ names making your life a misery? If so, Harper’s Bazaar has come to the rescue, publishing an A-Z cheat sheet to help you tackle Moschino, Hermes, Miu Miu, Lanvin and more. You never need be embarrassed again when getting your fashion lingo on …
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Bored Panda brings us 30 untranslatable words from other languages – with some attractive illustrations by Anjana Iyer. This picture captures the meaning of the Japanese word bakku-shan, for example, in a way that the English language simply can’t.
Anjana Iyer, from Bored Panda
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Ending on a serious note this week, Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker wrote movingly about the need to speak clearly and directly when conveying hard truths. Commenting after the recent California shooting, Gopnik commended the father of one of the victims for doing just this. “The war against euphemism and cliché matters not because we can guarantee that eliminating them will help us speak nothing but the truth but, rather, because eliminating them from our language is an act of courage that helps us get just a little closer to the truth. Clear speech takes courage.”
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Question: “How was your day at the seaside yesterday?”
Brit answer: “Yeah … We had an absolutely brilliant time.”
Question: “What are you planning to do once you graduate?”
Brit answer: “Yeah … I haven’t really made any concrete plans yet.”
Question: “What did you think of the movie last night?”
Brit answer: “Yeah … It was pretty crap.”
For better or worse, as I become more and more American — culturally, socially and colloquially — and when I dip back into British life each summer, I enjoy picking up on some of the subtle speech habits that sweep through the British-English lingo, which I tend to notice having been away from it for a while. Some come for a short stay, others settle in for longer.
I’ve been especially struck by something in the last couple of years that (at least to my knowledge) doesn’t seem to have been noted or commented on. It’s the seemingly widespread use of yes — or, more frequently, yeah — as a filler kicking off the answer to an open-ended question; hence the examples above. (And I’m not talking about questions that obviously invite agreement or disagreement, or a yes or no answer). It’s a yeah that’s usually uttered with the faint upward lilt of a question and followed by an ellipsis-shaped pause for hesitant or thoughtful effect. You’ll know it when you hear it.
All languages have their own set of filler sounds and words; used primarily to hold our place in a conversation while our brains catch up with our mouths, they’re (usually) meaningless utterances that indicate, effectively, “it’s now (or still) my turn to talk, but please wait while I work out what exactly I’m going to say next”. In English speakers, the most common filler sounds are uh, er, and um, according to a study published in Language and Speech in 2001. Certainly the most talked-about modern filler word is like, and it generates enough discussion and debate to fill several volumes (see Glossophilia’s earlier post on the subject), mainly because of its rapid, sweeping and largely inexplicable invasion of standard English. Anatoly Liberman noted on the OUP blog a few years ago that it isn’t just in English where this epidemic has raged: “the analogs of like swamped other languages at roughly the same time or a few decades later. Germans have begun to say quasi in every sentence. Swedes say liksom, and Russians say kak by; both mean “as though.” In this function quasi, liksom, and kak by are recent.”
Well is another very common sentence-starting filler, perhaps more acceptable or respectable than like and therefore employed in more formal situations, such as interviews. And more recently the introductory So … has become ubiquitous, especially in business, corporate or political settings. (That word is probably better left for a separate discussion.) Younger people are more likely to use the filler words like, y’know, I mean, so, actually, literally, basically, right, I’m tellin’ you and you know what I mean? These can occur more or less anywhere in the sentence, and don’t have any real semantic meaning when they’re serving this killer filler role.
But fillers aren’t always completely meaningless: they can sometimes be a mark of uncertainty or even defensiveness, when the speaker is guarding against a possible rebuttal or challenge from their conversation partner. As it were, if you will, so to speak and even like can be used to tone down the speaker’s commitment to a statement or claim. (This was also discussed more fully in an earlier Glossophilia post.)
Whereas most of these filler words are heard and now considered standard on both sides of the Atlantic, there are a few that don’t travel well. We can easily imagine the words actually, basically, as it were, or so to speak issuing naturally from the mouth of a dithering Hugh Grant character, but not so instinctively from a Bruce Willis type. If you will is the nearest American equivalent to as it were, although it’s fairly rare nowadays and considered rather stuffy.
As far as I can tell, yeah at the start of the answer to an open-ended question is something you’ll hear only on English tongues, and I’ll venture to suggest that it has become something of a Britishism (at least colloquially) in recent times. Listen out for it, and see if you agree …
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Update: Yeah, it goes even further. The simple “yeah …” has evolved and taken on a more overt element of ambiguity. “Yeah, no…” is how a Brit might start to answer your question — or, equally confusingly, “no, yeah…” . And very occasionally you’ll get the full Monty: “yeah, no…, yeah …”. Just watch an episode of the BBC’s mockumentary W1A and – yeah, no — you’ll agree. Yeah. No, yeah. Really.
Benjamin Franklin called it “awkward and abominable” in a letter to the lexicographer Noah Webster in 1789. He was talking about “verbing”: the hijacking of nouns for use as verbs — a practice that dates back many centuries. Even Shakespeare was doing it back in about 1595 when the Duke of York reacted angrily to his nephew Bolingbroke’s greeting: “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle!” Continue reading
I’ve recently recovered from a horrible episode of strep throat: that thing where you feel as though you’ve swallowed a chandelier-full of broken glass. “Strep?” asked some of my English friends, “What’s that? We don’t have that over here.” Well, they presumably do, at least sometimes: streptococcus infections don’t just confine themselves to American throats, as far as I know. Every so often in the UK, like a Scottish lake monster or a moor-dwelling bear-cat, an especially nasty infection of the gullet is spotted in the wilderness and given a medical-sounding name — “tonsillitis”, most likely. But rare is the GP who’s sufficiently convinced they’re in the presence of a genuine illness that warrants some kind of treatment — let alone its own official name. The American physician, by contrast, has an arsenal of tests, prescriptions and monikers lined up and at the ready to label and treat every germ and condition that dares to cross her threshold, even before the disease has had a chance to shake hands and introduce itself formally. Welcome to one of the great differences between the Yanks and the Brits: health talk. Actually — just health.
Mono* is a good one: you might be met with a blank stare if you complain of that singular affliction in England. There, you might be granted the more romantically descriptive diagnosis of glandular fever — but only if you’re at death’s door and you’ve complained loudly and often enough, and “swollen glands” just isn’t cutting it …
In America, you’re sick. Maybe really sick — and no-one wants to be anywhere near you. Please stay home, for everyone’s sake. We don’t want your germs. When you’re a Brit you’re ill. Maybe really ill. But you’ll keep going into the office, no matter how ill you feel, and that’s what all your colleagues expect of you: Buck up, show some stamina, and stop sniffling and whinging. Of course, that’s only unless or until you’ve been given a lesser-spotted diagnosis or it’s time to call an ambulance…
However, feeling or being sick in England is a very different story. That word spells vomit, so everyone move out the way fast …
Does your child have any itchy butt – or bum? If he’s called Junior, he’s probably got pinworm. If he’s called Prince George, he has most likely picked up a case of threadworm. Go wriggle.
If you tell an American you have a verruca on your foot, they might think you’re weird for naming your plantar wart after a character in a movie**. Yanks don’t generally have verrucas or veronicas that need treating, unless they’re in pre-school. But even then, they don’t generally have them.
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It can get confusing if you’re on the wrong side of the pond when your bodily functions start to go awry. Here’s some terminology to watch out for.
Surgery / Office: Don’t panic if you’re sent to the surgery when you come a cropper in those green and pleasant lands. All GPs have surgeries, whether or not they’re actual surgeons. They’re not necessarily going to remove one of your limbs.
Operating theatre / OR: When the kind English doctor tells you you’re going into theatre, she means you’re going under the knife, not that you have talent. Start counting backwards …
A & E or Casualty / ER: When you’re hit by a lorry, ask for the nearest A & E — and no, that’s not a TV channel over there. Also, just because you’re going to casualty, doesn’t mean you are one … Big accident in the Big Apple? No worries: head to the nearest ER, where you might spot Dr. Ross and company.
Surgical spirit / rubbing alcohol: When the English doctor asks if you have surgical spirit in your medicine cabinet, he’s not asking about your positive attitude. He is a Brit, after all. Brits know what alcohol is, but it’s strictly for pouring down their gullets …
Chemist / pharmacist; chemist / drug store: The British chemist will dispense your medicine at the chemist, but don’t expect to see him bent over a Bunsen burner.
Plaster / band-aid: If you give a Brit a Band-Aid, he’ll know it’s Christmas …
GP / primary care physician: In England, Dr. Smith, your GP (general practitioner), will refer you to Mr. Jones, a consultant or specialist. The American Mr. Jones — an eye doctor or other specialist physician — prefers to be addressed as Dr., thank you very much. (See Glossophilia’s earlier post on addressing docs trans-Atlantically, “Why are you operating on me, Mister?”). After all, they are all doctors — probably better known as physicians in America.
Gynie or gynae / OBGYN: A British lady visits her gynae (short for gynaecologist) for girlie matters. Her American counterpart prefers the five-letter acronym to name her designated specialist, whether or not she plans to use the OB** part of the service.
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Just like people, drugs and medications on different sides of the Atlantic are mixed in terms of how well they’re understood on foreign shores. Sometimes they’re no different, but more often than not they have completely different names, in both brand and generic forms. Two of the most widely used over-the-counter pain-killers have completely different names — and reputations — on different sides of the pond. Acetaminophen, the generic form of America’s Tylenol, is known in the UK as paracetamol (with brand names Panadol or Calpol). Whereas Tylenol can be had like candy — the more you buy, the deeper the discount, paracetamol can be harder to come by, at least in large quantities. Brits have been known to don disguises or hire accomplices to purchase more than their daily allowance of the rationed wonder drug. (Quantities at point of sale are strictly limited in the UK, due to the high risk of overdose.) Ibuprofen is a generic name familiar to both Yanks and Brits with headaches, but these patients part company when naming their preferred brands, buying it as Motrin or Advil in the U.S. and as Nurofen or Anadin in Great Britain.
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Brits and Yanks can never agree on spelling, and medical terms are no exception. Here are some of the more common body parts and afflictions that might look to a Brit like spelling mistakes on Dr. Ross’s script (and by that I mean his prescription — not his screenplay). We Brits love to add in those ‘a’s, or occasionally ‘o’s.
anemia (U.S.) vs. anaemia (UK)
anesthetic vs. anaesthetic
cesarean/cesarian vs. caesarean/caesarian
diarrhea vs. diarrhoea
esophagus vs. eosophagus
gynecology vs. gynaecology
hemoglobin vs. haemoglobin
hemophilia vs. haemophilia
hemorrhage vs. haemorrhage
hemorrhoid vs. haemorrhoid
homeopath vs. homoeopath
leukemia vs. leukaemia
orthopedic vs. orthopaedic
pediatric vs. paediatric
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Medical slang is where the fun starts. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, EMTs, and other hospital and medical staff have to talk quickly: by saving syllables they’re saving lives, and that’s where all the abbreviations and snappy nicknames come into play. At least that’s what the TV medical soaps would have us believe. The reality of life on the rounds and on the wards is unfortunately quite different and much more humdrum. The long hours, annoying patients and trivial complaints are relieved only by a steady stream and healthy dose of in-jokes and black humor — and this is really where the slang comes into its own. Thanks to the work of British doctor Adam Fox of St Mary’s Hospital in London, we are now privy to some of that wicked medical terminology and what it really means. Over a period of several years, Fox and his colleagues compiled a list of about 200 common medical slang terms and euphemisms in common use in British hospitals. How many of these have made it across the pond is anyone’s guess: American doctors – please enlighten us.
Below are some selected highlights from that list, prefaced by this strong disclaimer from Fox et al about the unsavory nature of much of this lingo. “Medical slang has a growing vocabulary, yet its use in Britain remains mostly undocumented and overlooked by mainstream medical literature. … Although often distasteful and derogatory, slang serves a purpose. Consequently, offense can be experienced by patients, health care professionals, and physicians alike. Many are unaware of its ferocity, and, in producing a comprehensive dictionary of terms, the authors intend no ill feeling: The terms do not represent their views, but merely reflect the reality of hospital medicine.” Read at your peril.
Air biscuit – a stool that floats
ATS – acute thespian syndrome
Betty – diabetic
Brown trout – a stool that won’t float, as opposed to the air biscuit that does
Cheerioma – patient with a highly aggressive malignant tumour
Code brown – fecal incontinence
Departure lounge – geriatric ward
Digging for worms – varicose vein surgery
Freud squad – psychiatrists
GOMER – get out of my emergency room (aimed at the frequent flyers)
OAP – overanxious patient or parent
PRATFO – patient reassured and told to fuck off
Treat ‘n’ Street – quick patient turnaround in A&E/ER
TTFO – Told To Fuck Off
TUBE – Totally Unnecessary Breast Examination
UBI – Unexplained Beer Injury
Whopper with Cheese (fat woman with thrush)
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* short for mononucleosis
** Veruca Salt is a character in the Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was made into the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
*** Obstetrician
The weird word of this week is kakistocracy. Do you live under the regime of a kakistocracy? You might well have done at some point in your life: see below for the definition …
In the news this week: a bad reaction to bad grammar awards; bad spelling in DC; bad English words in Chinese; good punctuation etiquette amongst Harvard’s prefrosh (don’t ask); and some exotic emoticons.
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There’s a bit of a backlash against the Bad Grammar Awards, whose shortlist this year includes offenders such as the UK’s NHS, Tesco and Tristam Hunt; only in their sophomore year, the awards are coming under fire at The Guardian. “Academic linguists have left the rest of us easy prey to nonsense and ashamed of our English when we should be celebrating our extraordinary mastery of a language which really is ours. No matter how we say our words or which words we use, we native speakers form a collective democracy of experts. Unaware of this and every other revelation of modern linguistics, Hodgkinson, Gwynne, Gove and all the other know-nothing know-it-alls happily continue to peddle their sneering, condescending, dismissive, misanthropic, elitist, made-up twaddle.”
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Why is it that some English words are controversial in China? Three writers for the People’s Daily newspaper, who are leading the crusade against “zero translation” and helping fuel the national debate, blame “a lack of pride and confidence in one’s own culture and language, which leads to blindly worshipping anything Western”. The BBC reports.
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According to a report in the Daily Caller, the Board of Elections in Washington DC can’t spell — or perhaps they’re taking a “Liberterian” approach to language. Caleb Brown, director of multimedia at the Cato Institute, noticed the spelling error on a voter registration form in the District of Columbia. “Thank you. Will follow up with the appropriate staff about making a correction,” DC tweeted in response.
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The Harvard Crimson decodes the punctuation of texting. “Hundreds of high school prefrosh will be coming to campus this weekend, phones in hand, thumbs at the ready. In high school, texting was all about the abbreviations and acronyms. … Now, these prefrosh are at Harvard, and at Harvard, it’s punctuation that matters.” Prefrosh? Don’t ask — I don’t know …
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If you’re looking for some unusual emoticons but want to use only “real” characters in your prose, mental_floss offers 16 characters from other languages that might just do the trick. Who knew, for example, that the Cyrillic zhe with diaeresis above it looks like a butterfly?
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Weird word of the week: kakistocracy: n. a system of government in which the rulers are the least qualified, least competent or most unprincipled citizens. From the Greek kakistos, meaning “worst”.
Words, language and usage have been all over the news this week. Read about a nifty word-changing browser extension, India’s election slogans, vocab in the new SAT, a swearing ban in Russia, the demise of cursive script, and more …
The weird word of the week is jobation. See below for its definition.
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“If you’re a cool-headed, fair-minded, forward-thinking descriptivist like my colleague David Haglund, it doesn’t bother you one bit that people often use the word “literally” when describing things figuratively. If, on the other hand, you’re a cranky language bully like me, it figuratively bugs the crap out of you every time.” That’s Will Oremus on Slate’s “Future Tense” blog, in his piece describing the new Chrome browser extension that replaces the word “literally” with “figuratively”on sites and articles across the web, “with deeply gratifying results.”
[This reminds me of one of my favorite Tweeters — Stealth Mountain — who sends a tweet to everyone on the web who types the words “sneak peak”, telling them, literally, “I think you mean ‘sneak peek'” … ]
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The revised SAT won’t include obscure vocabulary words any more, the New York Times reports. “One big change is in the vocabulary questions, which will no longer include obscure words. Instead, the focus will be on what the College Board calls ‘high utility’ words that appear in many contexts, in many disciplines—often with shifting meanings—and they will be tested in context.”
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Is cursive handwriting slowly dying out in America? PBS Newshour looks at the history of “joined-up writing” and asks about the future of this art form. “With young thumbs furiously pounding out abbreviated words and internet slang while texting and with fingers flying across keyboards writing emails, reports and, yes, even news articles, the act of taking a pen and carefully crafting notes and letters is occurring less frequently in the modern world.”
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The BBC looks at India’s colorful election slogans. Yes, they can too.
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The Russian parliament’s lower house has passed a ban on swearing (or what the Americans call cursing) in films, music and other works of art. The BBC reports.
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Ever wondered where the expression “bite the bullet” came from? Or “cold feet” or “go with the flow”? Buzzfeed gives us 36 unexpected origins of everyday British phrases.
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Urszula Clark on the British Council blog asks “which variety of English language should you speak?”. The results of Clark’s research show “how dynamic, fragmented and mobile the English language has become. At the same time, the influence of traditional gatekeepers of ‘standard’ English, such as the BBC, is weakening.”
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Weird word of the week: jobation. Noun: (chiefly British): a scolding; a long tedious rebuke or reproof. “It is difficult for me to justify to myself the violent jobation which my Father gave me in consequence of my scream, except by attributing to him something of the human weakness of vanity. — from Father and Son by Edmund Gosse, 1907.
Both my dad and one of my good friends are having their (respective) first books published in the coming weeks* — and the anticipation is killing me. I’ve got them both on pre-order, and amazon reminds me in red letters that “This title has not yet been released.” Released? Why not published?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the verb to release — in its transitive form — means (among other things) “publish or make available for publication (a document, piece of information, etc.); make available to the public (a film, recording, etc.).” The Oxford American Dictionary is a little more specific: “4. allow information to be generally available. 5. make a movie or recording available to the public.” It’s curious that neither definition offers the book as an example of this verb’s object. We’re long used to the idea of films or CDs making their public debuts in the form of a release — and indeed, movies can also “go on general release”. Both definitions above also make references to “information” being made available — but this to my mind means something quite different from the act of publishing a book or other material. To publish, according to the OED, is “to prepare and issue (a book, journal, piece of music, or other work) for public sale”.
I work in the world of music publicity, where I regularly issue press or news releases and I talk about CDs (and sometimes DVDs) being released. In the former case we’re “releasing” news and information that has, at least implicitly, been kept under wraps and from public knowledge until the appropriate time. I would argue that this sense of the verb release ties in logically with its other meanings: “to set someone free from imprisonment or confinement; free someone from a duty; allow to move freely.” Note that the OAD definition above “allows” information to be made available. It certainly implies that information that was previously restricted is at last being unleashed or revealed.
Granted, you could stretch that idea and claim that a book is being kept under wraps while it passes through the publication process, but it’s really not the same idea. So what accounts for this fairly recent phenomenon (or at least I think it’s fairly recent: please correct me if I’m wrong) of using publish and release interchangeably?
I have a few thoughts; feel free to disagree with me or to suggest other ideas.
First, is it possible that we’ve become so used to the idea of seeing, reading or hearing something the moment it becomes available — whether it’s a piece of news/gossip, a new episode or series on Netflix, or a downloadable track — that just the act of accessing or obtaining it is almost as important as the thing itself? The word release has an immediacy and even a sense of revelation that publish just can’t compete with, and we’re hungry for whatever is brand new.
Or is it something to do with the standard availability of audio and digital versions of a book, whose publication nowadays is technically more akin to a movie or CD release, given that it’s downloadable and delivered directly to your screen or device of choice?
Another related idea is that book publishers and retailers are trying to market their product as an item of leisure and entertainment — aligning it in the consumer’s mind more with movies and music and less as a category in its own right. Especially now that we’re one-stop shopping at online retailers, we want to load all our new releases into our virtual shopping baskets — whether we end up watching, listening to or reading them once they’re in our clutches.
The word publish might just have become too old-fashioned for the modern young reader-slash-consumer. It conjures up dusty images of paper, ink and printing presses, pesky nit-picking editors, and an interminable wait that guarantees it will be out of date before it even lands on the doormat (even if it is a timeless novel). The modern-day book is hip, fresh, immediate and current: it’s ‘released’ instantaneously and accessed with the touch of a button. Why would anyone consider publishing anything any more?
* Damian Fowler’s Falling Through Clouds is published by St. Martin’s Press on April 29; Brian Barder’s What Diplomats Do is released on July 16 by Rowman & Littlefield.
Dubya: An egghead or an eggcorn?
Admit it: at some point you’ve asked yourself this question. When you’re anticipating that awful something that might or might not come to pass, should you be saying “if worse comes to worst” or “if worst comes to worst”? (Some of you might even be thinking of a third way of expressing that most disagreeable scenario. Now I’ve got you wondering …) You’re not really sure which is correct, since they sound almost identical coming out of most people’s mouths and you’re wondering whether logically that first word should be a comparative (more) or a superlative (most). Welcome to the world of eggcorns, which we all — or at least most of us — are guilty of uttering with amusing and unknowing regularity. What’s an eggcorn? It’s a word or phrase that results from mishearing or misinterpreting another one, with an element of the original being substituted for one that sounds very similar or identical.
Here are some classic phrases that are often spoken — or spelled — as eggcorns. You might be surprised to find out that you’ve been spouting eggcorns all these years — or even worse: that you’ve been laughing at other people’s eggcorns that aren’t really eggcorns at all …
If worse comes to worst or If worst comes to worst or even If worse comes to worse
Meaning “should the worst possible scenario come to pass”. I’ll let Ben Zimmer explain this one to you, as he did in the New York Times‘s On Language column a couple of years ago. The history and “correct” (or at least the original) version of this expression might surprise you.
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For all intents and purposes or For all intensive purposes
Meaning “for all practical or important purposes”, “practically speaking”. For everyone who says “intensive purposes”, I’m afraid you’ve been using a classic eggcorn. The expression “for all intents and purposes” dates back to the 1500s in English law, where it originally had a longer incarnation: “to all intents, constructions, and purposes”. It can be found in an act of legislation passed by Henry VIII in 1547.
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Champing at the bit or Chomping at the bit
Meaning “to be restlessly impatient to start”. There’s a horsey origin to the phrase. Champ is a verb meaning ‘to make a noisy biting or chewing action with the jaws and teeth”. Horses are said to ‘champ at the bit’, with bit referring to the mouthpiece of a horse’s bridle. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, champ has meant to bite (noisily, on something hard) since about 1577. If you say chomp at the bit, you’re in good company and using an ancient eggcorn of sorts (or you might be an American). Chomp became a variant of champ in the 17th century, although early references have people or animals chomping on food rather than on metal bits. Chomp in the context of “chomping at the bit” has become fairly standard in American English (although the American Heritage Dictionary still lists only champ in this context).
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Slight of hand or Sleight of hand
Referring to a technique used by magicians or card sharps to surreptitiously move or hide cards, coins or other objects to produce an effect. Which is it? Does it rhyme with kite or weight? See this earlier Glossophilia post to find out …
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No holds barred or No holes barred
Meaning “not subject to restriction” or “free from rules or parameters”. If you’re using holes, you’re using an eggcorn. The expression originates in the sport of wrestling, of which there are many forms. Historically there were no real rules restricting the wrestlers’ actions, but once FILA (the sport’s governing body) introduced certain regulations, there were prohibitions on wrestlers’ holds — ie. how they hold their opponents. Nowadays there are two forms of the sport in which no holds are barred: hardcore wrestling and cage fighting. Hence the expression “no holds barred”.
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To the manner born or To the manor born
Meaning, for all intents and purposes, “destined to be suited to the custom or lifestyle in question (often high-class or noble in quality) by virtue of birth” Glossophilia looked at the history of this expression in an earlier post on eggcorns. Find out whether Hamlet described himself as to the manor or manner born — and whether you’ve been in synch with Shakespeare’s hero all these years …
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Toe the line or Tow the line?
Meaning “to conform to a standard or rule”. We covered this athletic (or is it nautical?) phrase earlier on Glossophilia too: see an exploration/explanation here. Do you conform with your feet, or with a long rope attached to a ship?
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To give someone free reign or To give someone free rein
Giving someone “free reign” does seem to make sense, implying that they are being imparted with royal powers as a monarch does when she reigns over her subjects. But the origin of the phrase comes from horse-riding rather than ruling countries. When she comes across troublesome terrain, the rider will allow her horse to navigate the terrain on his own instinct by loosening the reins — and hence you give someone “free rein”.
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I couldn’t care less or I could care less
Meaning “I don’t give two hoots”, or “I really don’t give a damn” (as proclaimed famously by Rhett Butler). Perhaps this is less an eggcorn and more just lazy/evolutionary syllable-dropping — especially by American speakers, amongst whom “I could care less” is more common and becoming standard. But logically, if you really could care less, then don’t you actually care quite a lot?
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Should/could have or Should/could of
Again, this isn’t a true eggcorn but really just represents a common erroneous verb conjugation.
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Eggcorns shouldn’t be confused with malapropisms (when someone mistakenly uses a word that sounds like another word with a very different meaning — with unintended amusing results). For more on single-word malapropisms (featuring the masterful Mr. Malaprop himself, George W. Bush), see this earlier Glossophilia post. Mondegreens are a form of eggcorn, in that they represent an error of the ears. We’ll compile a list of classic mondegreens in a later post.
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Can you think of other eggcorn phrases? Please add them in the comments section below.