Eggcorn

An eggcorn is an idiosyncratic substitution of a word by the speaker for similar sounding expressions that evaluate to an altered but plausible sense.

An example would be old-timer 's disease Alzheimer 's disease. The eggcorn, unlike the malapropism meaning and proves next to the ignorance of the origin of the word also logic and creativity of the Creator.

Eggcorns often replace little familiar, archaic or obscure words with more modern expressions.

The term was coined in 2003 by Geoffrey Pullum on the blog Language Log linguists.

His conversation partner Mark Liberman had addressed the case of a woman, the egg corn acorn interchanged with the word, thereby missing an adequate description. Pullum suggested " eggcorn " before.

Examples

• Ex - patriot rather than expatriate
• Mating name instead of maiden name
• Instead of preying mantis praying mantis
• " Shooting panic " instead of " last minute panic "