To suppress something in the early stages is to nip it in the bud (of horticultural origins), but it is quite commonly thought to be ‘nip it in the butt’ – biting someone in the posterior would possibly stop them too but you might get a slap for your efforts.
To make a moot point means to raise a topic for discussion, moot meaning ‘debatable’ – and not ‘mute’ which means ‘silent’. To make a silent point is fairly pointless.
When I was young, I used to pray “Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name” – I’m not sure if this qualifies as an eggcorn, but I was disappointed to find that Harold wasn’t God’s name.
When Macduff learns that Macbeth has had his wife and children murdered, he cries “What, all my pretty chickens and their dam/At one fell swoop?” This expression means ‘terrible blow”. ‘Fell’, in those Shakespearean days, meant ‘savage’ or ‘ruthless’ but the expression nowadays is often mispronounced as one fowl swoop. As if being swiped by a chicken perhaps?
‘To all intents and purposes’, meaning ‘in all important respects’, is often pronounced to all intensive purposes.
One that always makes me laugh is a damp squid because squid live in the sea, so they would be fairly damp, whereas a damp squib is a firework that has failed to go off, and is used to describe a situation that is not very impressive.
A cup of chino might taste just as good as a cappuccino and hope springs a turtle certainly sounds like hope springs eternal.
Linguist Mark Liberman says eggcorns are ‘a symptom of human intelligence and creativity’. And they’re certainly fun to read. Have you found any good eggcorns lately? Please write in and let me know.
Happy Puzzling!
