Lend Me Your Ear

Because I take a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive, approach to grammar, I'm intrigued by real-life usage of language. I think the odd bits we use in everyday speaking might reveal something about us and our perception of the world. Hence, I'm fascinated by eggcorns, a type of slip of the ear in which people mishear a word, mispronounce it, and then insist that the malapropism is correct. These aren't simple errors in English like defuse/diffuse or scone/sconce, but more like a reshaping of a known expression. Oddly, they sometimes make more sense than the original form (except to lexicographers).

“Eggcorn” is itself an eggcorn of “acorn,” which a person might defend by saying that it's a seed of an oak (hence corn-like) and shaped like an egg. Eggcorns are so common that Chris Waigl has created an Eggcorn Database with gems like “towed the line,” “two sense worth,” and “given up the goat.”

Here are some more:

• girdle one's loins (gird one's loins)
• insectuous (incestuous)
• far-gone conclusion (foregone conclusion)
• flaw in the ointment (fly in the ointment)
• works like a champ (works like a charm)
• take with a grain assault (take with a grain of salt)
• stark raven mad (stark raving mad)