eggcorns, mondegreens, and re-analyses

[trochee]

Eggcorn sighting: "Lo for I shall reign down on them with great wrath and furious anger." A rather-modified version of something inspired by blackwingedboy.

Mondegreen sighting: "In the winter we can build a snowman, until the alligators knock him down". Thanks to beckyb for spotting this; I just found it elsewhere on Snopes, so it's a known mondegreen.

Also an interesting mis-analysis, spotted by JM in the department: "throw me the algene bottle!", presumably from an algene bottle, on analogy with the etymology of apron, which the OED says "In Eng., initial n has been lost by corruption of a napron to an apron." I love that the OED calls this "corruption".

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

What's odd about calling it corruption?

[trochee.livejournal.com]

"corruption" sounds so dirty and judgmental. Contempo linguists would say "reanalysis", and I'm inclined to agree. The phrase "corruption" follows the myth of the degraded, fallen language.

Because we all know back in the day English was pure and clean as the driven snow. :/