Yesterday, I described eggcorns and malapropisms, and referred the reader to several sites for learning more about them. Today, I want to explore how some of these eggcorns are used in the media. To do so, I compiled a list of nearly 700 items from The Eggcorn Database, an NPR discussion of eggcorns, some that I had kicking around in scattered notes, and a few that you had submitted to me through Facebook (thank you!). Then, I ran the list on two sets of data: 1) a collection of pop music lyrics built in accordance with the year-end Billboard Top 10 charts (1951-2014), and 2) a large sample of tweets collected from Twitter in 2013. Here, I will present the results from running the list on the lyric corpus.

First (or firstable, in Eggcornese), a note on the collection of lyrics I am using. I downloaded the lyrics from the internet this summer, using submissions posted by online users on various internet sites. While doing so, I scrubbed them, in terms of misspellings, obvious mistakes in wording, and metadata such as "instrumental" and "chorus." However, I have not yet done the work of editing while listening to the songs; rather, I have only been able to check for accuracy in those songs in which I get a positive hit for a word or linguistic feature. I hope to find the time and resources to systematically edit the corpus based on the language I myself hear in the songs in the near future.

Second(able), in yesterday's post there was a quick mention (via a link to a post by linguist Arnold Zwicky on the subject of eggcorns) of a mondegreen. Most readers of this post will know what this word refers to, but, as it is related to this section, I need to define it here. A mondegreen is a misunderstood word or phrase that is the result of a misheard song lyric. We all have our favorites, e.g. "Excuse me while I kiss this guy" by Jimi Hendrix (for a cool site on how to play like Jimi and other famous guitarist, click here; "No Dukes of Hazzard in the classroom" by Pink Floyd; and whatever we thought either Bruce Springsteen or Manfred Mann were singing in "Blinded by the Light":

I introduce mondegreens here because they directly relate to the results of this analysis. Somewhat surprisingly, out of the 640 song lyrics that were analyzed, only 4 included eggcorns that were on my list: expresso (for espresso), nip it in the butt (for nip it in the bud); and one in the same (for one and the same) in two songs. For the record, in only two of the songs does it sound to me as if the performers are using the eggcorns that the submitters present them as using, and in the other two songs, it sounds to me that the performers are using the standard variants. If this is true, it actually makes the words in question mondegreens for the submitters in their roles as listeners and eggcorns in their roles as scribes (and it clears the performers of using eggcorns, at least in these instances). However, I'll let you be the judge (with the warning that the content of some of these videos might not be suitable for work).

Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs performing their hit "Sugar Shack" (1963). Listen for expresso at 0:28

Outkast featuring Sleepy Brown performing "The Way You Move" (2003); is it nip it in the bud or nip it in the butt at 1:07?

Nelly Furtado performing "Promiscuous" (2006); is it one and the same or one in the same at 3:20?

Jennifer Lopez performing her hit "I'm Real" (2001); is it one in the same or one and the same at 0:13?

While I was hoping for more eggcorns in my lyric corpus and that they would be of better quality (by which I mean, they could be validated), I do take comfort in that 1) as the lyric collection becomes bigger (Top 30, Top 40, Top 100), the results of my future eggcorn analyses on pop lyrics will undoubtedly be more productive, and 2) tomorrow, I will share the results of an eggcorn analysis of Twitter in 2013, which should provide enough eggcorns to last us through the winter...