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The Atlantic on "eggcorns"--in dance writing


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as i try to think back to my so-called upbringing in northeast pennsylvania many moons ago, i can still hear of many things that variously 'landed up' one way or another.

i know the phrase 'to land up' was much in use back home, back then, and so i used it myself, as if it were the king's english.

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I can definitely see how "You'll end up in jail" could sound like "You'll land up in jail." :)

Well, there's Hammerstein and Kern in "Ol' Man River"

"You get a little drunk and you lands in jail"

There may be a Prepositional Crisis going on. Here's a quote from the NB column in the latest Times Literary Supplement (August 18 & 25):

Save Our Prepositions: a new campaign. We have already mentioned the difficulty with British public has with the verb to comprise, and the stray prepositions it tends to attract, principally "of" ... In the Observer recently, the actor Bill Nighy remarked: "If you spend your life saying, 'I'm bored with that,' and then a whole generation starts saying, 'I'm bored of it,' it does get to you." We're bored of it, too. Key in "bored of" to the Observer website, and you get 123 returns.

The preposition crisis divides into two: the augmented and the diminished. The first category includes meet with and head up .. and the admittedly charming beat up on ... The diminshed category inclues the meagre American show for the full-bodied British show up -- "he was expected but didn't show" -- and the similar walk for "walk out."

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ok i have to admit this one. my own personal 'eggcorn' came the first time i saw balanchine's midsummer night's dream, in a song by the chorus in which, as i now know, they sing, "hand in hand with fairy grace we will sing and bless this place'. however at the time i was convinced that the san francisco ballet had done an endorsement deal, as my mind kept hearing 'hand in hand with fairy grace, we will sing of Nestle's Place". seriously! :)

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I have a coworker from Chicago who introduced "I'm waiting on Joe to give me that info" instead of "I'm waiting for Joe to give me that info,"

Here in Chicago, we also say, "I'm going to the store. Do you want to go with?" I say this blushingly as an East Coast emigrant, as I use it occasionally myself.

My own personal pet peeve: Nu-kyu-lerr for nu-clee-err. Even the presidents can't get that one right!

And then there was the fifth grade pal of mine who said, "Ee-or-ka!" when he got something right. It took us a while to figure out he meant "Eureka!"

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My own personal pet peeve: Nu-kyu-lerr for nu-clee-err. Even the presidents can't get that one right!
:) Even a president who got his degree in it from the US Naval Academy! :pinch: But the current president had a "slip" several weeks ago, and I did the audio equivalent of a double take. :blink::huh: I swear, I swear I heard George W. Bush say NOO-klee-ur.

Honest! I did! And the worst part? It sounded so wrong! :P

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Yes, ‘nucular’ has been around for quite some time – anyone who catches ‘The China Syndrome’ will note that Michael Douglas says it that way, and I’m sure it was in circulation well before that. It’s entirely possible that if enough people keep saying it and it becomes widespread among the educated, the usage may very well become standard eventually – such things have happened before.

This doesn’t count as an eggcorn, but over time an interesting thing happened to the phrase ‘eat your cake and have it too.’ It’s now nearly always rendered as ‘have your cake and eat it too’ in spite of the fact that the latter doesn’t really make sense.

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