What is an eggcorn? Even if you don’t know, you have definitely used one at least once!

An eggcorn, if you didn’t know (and most of us didn’t) is when you  replace a word or part of a phrase with something that sounds similar but is incorrect.

According to the Metro.co.uk website, the term was coined by by American linguist Mark Liberman in 2003, when he described the case of a woman who thought the word ‘acorn’ was actually ‘eggcorn’.

Here are a few of our favourites, taken from around the Eggcorn database:

• The event was a damp squid (squib)
• He was playing music at full ball (bore)
• She was on tenderhooks waiting for her exam results (tenterhooks)
• The pond was teaming with fish (teeming)
• The card shark made a killing at the casino (card sharp)

The correct word appears in brackets.

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