A blog about translation, writing and language in all its glorious aspects
“Shoe-in”, Ben Zimmer points out, belongs to a special family of errors called “eggcorns”: misspellings, mis-hearings or misinterpretations of standard (often idiomatic) words or sayings. Their name itself derives from a misspelling of “acorn”. As Ben explains in Shifting Idioms: An Eggcornucopia, eggcorns might eventually reach folk-etymological permanence, or they might continue to be considered nonstandard …
Continue reading “If the shoe doesn’t fit (2): eggcorns and etymology”
Ben Zimmer’s latest On Language column in the New York Times (Beach-Blanket Lingo, 5 August 2010) examines the terms used by coastal resort residents (from-heres) to describe summer visitors (come-heres). One term used for the latter is shoobies, explained thus by John T. Cunningham, writing in 1958: day-trippers from Philly took advantage of the $1 round-trip …
Continue reading “If the shoe doesn’t fit: getting the etymology right”