Today’s Rhymes With Orange strip (by Hilary B. Price) turns on reanalysis + analogical coining, yielding a kind of pun that looks like a deliberate eggcorn — embodied in that rare and elusive creature, the pencilguin, cousin to the penguin, but very much resembling a pencil, specifically a Dixon Ticonderoga (maybe even with the HB medium soft (#2) lead American children tend to favor):
(#1) The pen of penguin is probably Welsh pen ‘head’ (the bodypart), but suppose we (mis)take it to be English pen ‘instrument for writing or drawing with ink’, a reanalysis encouraged by penguins having black bodies as dark as ink; then we can venture to create the analogical name pencilguin, for a penguin-like creature having a pencil-like body rather than a pen-like one
Indeed, the one encountered by Antarctic Cruiselines closely resembles a Dixon Ticonderoga):
(#2) Dixon Ticonderogas; note pink eraser, green- and yellow-banded metal collar, and yellow shaft
(#3) A pencilguin; note pink head, green and yellow neckband, and yellow body
Aa far as I know, pencilguins are unable to write (or erase, for that matter). Well, analogies are only analogies: feet are analogous to hands, but you can’t use a pair of scissors with them or make a fist or play the piano or use your first three toes to hold a pen for writing. Please don’t abuse the poor pencilguin for its inabilities. I mean, how many Ticonderogas can swim underwater or catch fish with their erasers?
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