Appendix C

Eggcorns: Incorrect Wording That Seems Correct

People sometimes misuse a word or phrase that not only sounds similar to the correct word but also has a logical if not pleasing quality about it. These are called eggcorns, a word that itself is an example of this linguistic phenomenon.

The term eggcorn is a distortion of acorn, but there is a logic of sorts: both acorns and eggs are (somewhat) oval and the basis of offspring. The words eggcorn and acorn also sound similar. In contrast, homonym errors (see Appendix A) involve words that merely sound alike, and rarely share much meaning. Eggcorns are similar to malapropisms because both deal with similar sounding phrases. However, malapropisms distort meaning greatly, are usually limited to one person or occasion, and are so extreme that people find them ridiculous, as in “Texas has a lot of electrical votes.”

In contrast, eggcorns are surprisingly commonplace and can go undetected because of comparable pronunciation and meaning of the correct and misused wording. Indeed, a few eggcorns are so common that some style guides accept them as informal variants, and some wholly acceptable terms today were at least partially based long ago on people mistaking one word for a similar sounding one (such as Jerusalem artichoke for what was once girasole artichoke).

Below is a list of common eggcorns. We classify them as “misused” because they should be avoided in formal writing, but their status will no doubt change over time. To keep the list manageable, we exclude song lyrics, despite never-ending confusion over what singers are actually saying (as in confusing Elton John’s “Hold me closer tiny dancer” with the incorrect “Hold me closer Tony Danza”).