I subscribe to a number of sites on grammar and word usage,
intended mostly for other writers. Recently a post arrived that seemed
interesting and I read through the examples of words and phrases used or
spelled incorrectly, followed by the correct form. Alas, one example had the
correct and incorrect forms reversed. That led me to an online exploration of eggcorns. (Remember those? We used to
collect them as children but back then they were called acorns.)
Eggcorns,
if you recall, are words or phrases known but misunderstood by the speaker and
thus replaced by plausible, similar-sounding alternatives. The term was coined
in 2003 by someone who misspelled acorn
as eggcorn. Back when I was prone to
collecting acorns I also collected cliches
and eggcorns, trying to figure out how the human mind came up with them.
A phrase becomes a cliche, after all, because it has proved
useful, and I wanted to grasp how several of these had sounded the first time
they were used. Homer’s wine-dark sea, for example, has little meaning to
someone who lives on the American Prairie or the Atlantic seaboard and looks
out day after day on the undulating blues and sometimes greens and grays of
bays and harbors. But one day, while sailing with my family, we were caught in
a squall, and the aptness of “wine-dark sea” became vividly clear. Sometimes an
eggcorn, phrase or term, reflects an uncertain grasp of the original intent but
a determination to convey something close to the presumed meaning, and this, I
think, reflects well on the speaker or writer. I’ve collected a few here,
including the one that set me thinking about this topic.
saying (or writing):
“all intensive
purposes” when you mean “all intents and purposes”
“daring-do”
when you mean “derring-do”
“after all is set and done” when you mean “after
all is said and done”
“a new leash on life” when you mean “a new
lease on life”
The
next (and last) one is the impetus for this post.
saying
“to the manor born” when you mean “to the manner born”
Historians and etymologists might argue how the error arose
(misunderstanding of the original phrase, intended satire, or social
commentary), but the word manner is
undoubtedly correct. The phrase was probably coined by Shakespeare, and appears
in Hamlet (1602), Act 1,
Scene 4:
HORATIO:
Is it a custom?
HAMLET:
Ay, marry, is’t./
But to my mind, though I am native here/
And to the manner born, it is a custom/
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
But to my mind, though I am native here/
And to the manner born, it is a custom/
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
According to the website (noted
below), “The meaning is clear. Hamlet knows the custom being spoken of because
he is native, that is, born locally.”
The editor
of the site goes on to add: “The ‘manor’ version comes much later. The earliest
reference I’ve found so far is in The
Times, July 1859, in a story about the Emperor of France’s visit to
Austria.” For more on this, go to http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/to-the-manner-born.html
For
a list of eggcorns, go to
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/page/2
For a list of eggcorns, including the erroneous manor for manner, go to https://www.dailywritingtips.com/12-idioms-commonly-seen-with-homonymic-spelling-errors/
And for a list of my books, which I hope are cliche and error
free (but probably not because I am, after all, human. Eek! Another cliche!),
go to:
https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Oleksiw/e/B001JS3P7C
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SusanOleksiw
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/susan+oleksiw?_requestid=1017995
