In the previous blog on this topic, I attempted to differentiate eggcorns from other verbal “slips”, and suggested that they illustrate how people try to make sense of idioms they hear that are both unfamiliar and seemingly nonsensical. I also suggested that the difference between eggcorns and the originals that inspired them could often be reduced to a single sound. In other words, I want to hone in [sic] on the fact that not only are eggcorns semantically motivated and “logical”; they also often make sense from a sound point of view. They are not, as nothing in language is, random in the sense of being arbitrary, and are susceptible of rational explanation. For instance, not only does damp squid make sense meaningwise; it replaces the voiced plosive /d/ with another one, /b/, rather than, say, replacing it with squit. which ends with a voiceless plosive, but could equally convey the meaning of dampness and unpleasantness. The section on “typology” in the list that follows, hopefully, illustrates ways in which such modifications are phonetically non-random. Of course, eggcorns can be highly amusing if they generate a surreal image. But the amusement they provide should be disinterested and kind-hearted; it should not be of the rebarbative “I despise you when you use poor grammar” school. I also suggested that the survey I talked about in the earlier blog could not seriously be considered “research”. Which raises the question: where is evidence for eggcorns to be found? Language corpora of different kinds are the obvious answer. There is also the mother of all eggcorn collections here, the eggcorn database set up by asphyxianados years ago. (I made that one up, in case you’re wondering, but a google does get some hits.) That said, eggcorns are largely oral phenomena, and therefore looking in written sources for them might be akin to looking for God in a brewery. Nevertheless, written collections of one kind or another do shed some light. What follows is a detaiedl analysis of the first four in the original list (there’ll be further blogs on others). Each one is analysed according to the following criteria: 1.1 In eggcorn database? Y/N 1.2 If Yes, year of first citation mentioned in that database? 1.3 Typology 1.2 Frequency of original in the vast database GloWbE1 vs the eggcorn version 1.3 If in Google Ngrams, earliest relevant example 1.4.1 History & explanation (if applicable) 1.4.2 Other observations (Numbering starts with the number of the entry in the list, and then continues with the numbers of the four categories and subcategories mentioned above.
  1. to be pacific (to be specific) 1.1-1.1.2 (Eggcorn database & Year) N; 1.1.3 (Typology) initial consonant phoneme drop; 1.2 (In GloWbE?) N; 1.3 (Google) no Googles, other than metalinguistic 1.4.2 This one puzzles me. The use of “pacifically” for “specifically” is well attested; so much so, in fact, that is practically a meme. I suspect that whoever put the list together found this somewhere and regurgitated it.
 
  1. escape goat (scapegoat) 2.1.1 (In eggcorn database?) Y; 2.1.2 (If in, date of first citation) undated; 2.1.3 (Typology) initial vowel phoneme addition; 2.2 (GloWbE figs.) 3,094/63 escape goat; escapegoat 5;
2.3. (Earliest Ngrams citation) As can be seen on this link, 1853, it seems. That entry is from a French-English dictionary. Earlier quotations seem to be not germane to this discussion. 2.4.1 (History & explanation) The “scape” in scapegoat is escape with its first vowel chopped off. In Google Ngrams, some of its occurrences are metalinguistic, i.e. in discussion of how it came to be. As Ben Zimmer pointed out in the eggcorn database: Note by Ben Zimmer, Nov. 15, 2010: “As explained by Merrill Perlman in ‘Passing the Blame’ (CJR Language Corner, 11/15/10), the change of scapegoat to escape goat simply brings it into line with its etymological origins: ‘The concept of the “scapegoat” is in the Bible, in Leviticus, as part of the ritual of atonement. The word “scape-goat” itself, though, did not appear until 1530, according to The Oxford English Dictionary: “In the Mosaic ritual of the Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi), that one of two goats that was chosen by lot to be sent alive into the wilderness, the sins of the people having been symbolically laid upon it, while the other was appointed to be sacrificed.” That first goat escaped death, though it was loaded with sin. Since “scape” was merely a spelling variation of “escape,” it was, literally, an “escape goat.” Maybe “escaped goat” would be more grammatically correct, but no matter.”’ It is also worth mentioning the further eggcorn scrapegoat.
 
  1. damp squid (damp squib) 3.1.1 (In eggcorn database?) Y; 3.1.2 (If in, date of first citation) 2005; 3.1.3 (Typology) Final consonant phoneme swap (voiced plosives); 3.2 (GloWbE figs.) 352/20; 3.3 (Earliest Ngrams citation) 1898 “By the time she returns to her ‘muttons’ all interest in the entertainment has evaporated, and the denouement fizzles out like a damp squid.” The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, Volume 68;
3.4.1 A squib is a type of firework, and a damp one doesn’t go off, and is therefore disappointing. The OED first records the idiom from as “recently” as 1846. 3.4.2 What can I say? This was the title my editor chose for my parvum opus. The idiom, in either form, seems to be far less known in the US than in the UK. In the earlier blog, I mentioned Jeanette Winterson’s remark that she grew up believing it was damp squid. Here it is again, for interest: “I laboured long into adult life really believing that there was such a thing as a ‘damp squid’, which of course there is, and when things go wrong they do feel very like a damp squid to me, sort of squidgy and suckery and slippery and misshapen. Is a faulty firework really a better description of disappointment?”
  4. nipped it in the butt (nipped in the bud) 4.1.1 (In eggcorn database?) Y; 4.1.2 (If in, date of first citation) 2002; 4.1.3 (Typology) t/d-deletion2; 4.2 (GloWbE figs.) 462/2; 4.3 (Earliest Ngrams citation) n/a; 4.4.1 The original, nip in the bud, is a horticultural metaphor. First recorded in its current form in 1607, but known in a variant from 1590: F. Beaumont Woman Hater iii. i. sig. D4v   Yet I can frowne and nip a passion Euen in the bud. 4.4.2 I couldn’t track this down in Ngrams, which is perhaps not surprising, given its mere two occurrences in GloWbE. If you google “nip in the butt” millions of ostensible hits show up. I scanned the first two screens of hits, and all, bar one, were discussions of the misuse of one for t’other, or knowing puns. The single exception, from a blogger who had grown up believing “in the butt” to be the correct version, shows how adept people are at rationalizing their own usage: “I thought the saying was more of a scare tactic. Basically if you don’t cut out the behavior that you are doing you will get nipped (bit, pinched, etc) in the butt. This was pretty powerful for me growing up.” The confusion with butt is not only “logical”, as illustrated by the blogger’s comment above; it is also motivated by conflicting meanings of nip. For the in the butt version, people assign the meaning “bite, peck” etc. to the verb, as in the cartoon below.  However, the idiom derives from a different, and nowadays rarer meaning, which the OED classifies as sense 13 a: “Originally: to check or destroy the growth of (a plant), as by the physical removal of a bud or the like, or through the action of cold or frost. Later: to arrest or prevent the growth or development of (anything).” Additionally, I would have thought that the existence of other frequent idioms with butt (pain in the butt, kick in the butt, etc.) must play a part.  
1 GloWbE stands for “The Global Corpus of Web-based English, a corpus containing over 1.9 billion words of text from 20 countries where English is used. 2 t/d-deletion, discussed here, explains why e.g. skimmed milk might become skim milk, and why some estate agents wax lyrical if a house for sale “boasts” stain glass windows. Try saying end game very quickly. Now, is there a /d/ there? Be honest.

Discover more from Jeremy Butterfield Editorial

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

1 Comment

Leave a Reply