this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
157 points (94.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26916 readers
3241 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

That's a wonderful eggcorn.

I was watching a video talking about how eggcorns are an unusual category of error because they require intelligence and creativity to make. The argument was that the process goes like this:

A new word or phrase is heard, but not understood. The brain makes sense of it using existing vocabulary that has sounds that are close enough. This is accompanied an explanation for why those specific words make sense in this new context.

For example: the original eggcorn was a mishearing of acorn. Egg because it's roughly egg shaped, and corn is sometimes used to describe small objects similar to how grain can be.

All this to say, it's maybe not something to feel dumb about. Your brain did something neat.