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hpr3608 :: Battling with English - part 5

Confused homophones; misunderstanding words from other countries; Eggcorns

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Hosted by Dave Morriss on 2022-06-01 is flagged as Explicit and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
grammar, spelling, homonym, Eggcorn. 4.
The show is available on the Internet Archive at: https://archive.org/details/hpr3608

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Duration: 00:15:27

Battling with English.

Looking at the English language and highlighting some common anomalies, mistakes, mispellings, grammar problems and similar.

Overview

This time I have three main subjects to discuss, all of them dealing with misunderstandings of words:

  • Mistakes made with homophones, one group of examples
    • The definition gets a little technical, see the Wikipedia description.
  • Misunderstandings of words from other languages
    • Pundit
  • Looking at Eggcorns (a name chosen from a misspelling of acorn)
    • Wikipedia: an alteration of a phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements

Long notes

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Comment #1 posted on 2022-06-01 15:11:05 by Stache_AF

The Eggcorn That Gets Me

The one that always gets me when people use it is chomping at the bit, as opposed to what it originally was; champing at the bit. While chomping isn't technically incorrect, it's not as descriptive in my book.

Comment #2 posted on 2022-06-01 21:33:16 by Windigo

Eggcorns

I love that the TTS engine pronounced it "ichcorns" to add to the confusion. :)

Comment #3 posted on 2022-06-01 22:05:25 by Dave Morriss

Champing and chomping

Hi Stache_AF, I was taught that the expression used 'champing' (where 'champ' rhymes with 'ramp' in British English), and that it was describing a horse grinding its teeth on the bit in its mouth in frustration.

Researching a little I find 'champ' is specific to livestock (mostly horses I think) and describes noisy chewing of fodder.

Comment #4 posted on 2022-06-01 22:50:44 by Dave Morriss

A robot did it and ran away

Hi Windigo,

This shows that the word 'eggcorn' must have originated from some robot with a slightly bent TTS.

The robot in my head says: "By the itching of its corn, the TTS makes me forlorn". I'm glad I didn't share that though...

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