From a reader on 8/24:
Are you involved in collecting eggcorns? In case you are, I thought you might be interested in a potential one that I’ve encountered “in the wild” (i.e., a Reddit post). This person wrote jig solve puzzles instead of jigsaw puzzles:
I should have been diagnosed [with ADHD] as a child but it was the early 90s in a poor rural area. Special ed at my school didn’t diagnose me with anything specific … they just told my mom I needed to spend time doing jig solve puzzles. So, I forced my way through. (Reddit posting)
My response:
I certainly have been involved in collecting eggcorns. But there are only so many balls you can juggle at one time, and I am now a old man with not a lot of time left, so I’ve been pretty much out of the eggcorn business. But you will be pleased to hear that jigsaw > jig solve isn’t in the eggcorn database and hasn’t come up in the eggcorn forum, so I might post on it.
And now I am.
From NOAD:
noun jigsaw: 1 [a] (also jigsaw puzzle) a puzzle consisting of a picture printed on cardboard or wood and cut into various pieces of different shapes that have to be fitted together [AZ: a puzzle, originally of wooden pieces, created by a jigsaw, a bladed machine for cutting — sawing — shapes out of wood, metal, or plastic]
Modern jigsaws are cardboard and are stamped out by a machine more like a cookie cutter than a saw, so the saw of jigsaw is opaque to many modern users (unless they’re familiar with machine shops). But everybody knows that jigsaws are puzzles to be solved, so if you understand the name to be jig solve it at least makes more sense. Imposing that understanding is the eggcorning step.
I continued:
The context suggests that it’s an innocent eggcorn, not a deliberate playful reshaping (a kind of pun). I recently came across Judge Judy and executioner suggested as an eggcorn [for the idiom judge, jury, and executioner ‘someone with full power to judge and punish others unilaterally’ (Wiktionary), with judge, jury understood as a reference to the very popular Judge Judy reality court tv show], but the only occurrences I could find were clearly deliberate plays on words, so I might post on that as well.
And so I will.
Judge Judy and Executioner. A notable (and ostentatiously deliberate) use in the Limited Life video game. From the Life Series (gamer fandom) Wiki:
Judge Judy and Executioner (also known as the Grandmaster Frog) was Solidarity’s frog
You don’t need to know more about JJ&E’s role in the game, only to recognize the JJ&E is a deliberately playful proper name.
On deliberate eggcorns (? deli eggcorns ?) — essentially, calculated puns dressed up as eggcorns that a clueless or confused person might commit — see Geoff Pullum’s Language Log posting on 5/3/12 “A surf hit of eggcorns”:
The following delightful essay, composed with a rich dollop of deliberate eggcorns, is making its way around the web via repostings and emailings
[beginning:] I am sorry to be the baron of bad news, but you seem buttered, so allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment …
And then they pile up in waves — surf hits — until you become unsure about your mastery of the formulaic expressions of English.
Leave a Reply