Mighty yolks from little eggcorns grow
Which sentences are correct?
- That is a bald-faced lie.
- That is a bold-faced lie.
- He’s the spitting image of his father.
- He’s the splitting image of his father.
- He’s the spit and image of his father.
- Day and night, she was at his beck and call.
- Day and night, she was at his beckon call.
- Let’s flesh out the itinerary before we hit the road.
- Let’s flush out the itinerary before we hit the road.
The correct sentences are A, E, F, and H.
Why?
Each pair of sentences illustrates an eggcorn—the name for a word that replaces another due to mishearing or misinterpretation, but that makes sense in the context of the phrase. The term eggcorn is itself an eggcorn of the word acorn. It’s not hard to see the resemblance between acorns and dried corn kernels (think Corn Nuts). And with their caps, acorns look like eggs sitting in little eggcups. Cute, huh?
Some eggcorns make more sense than others. Turning to our examples, bald-faced means “naked” or “obvious” or “wearing no disguise”—in other words, “shameless” or “brazen.” This term is often replaced by the eggcorn “bold-faced,” because liars are so bold as to lie to your face—in other words, “shameless” or “brazen.”
The eggcorn “spitting image” has largely replaced the original spit and image, even though the original phrase logically makes sense and the eggcorn does not. Back in the day, spit and image meant that a child was like its parent, inside (the spit or saliva) and out (the image). The eggcorn is a result of mishearing spit and as “spitting.” But “spitting image” makes little sense to modern speakers, so now it, too, is in the process of being replaced by the baby eggcorn “splitting image,” which users interpret to mean “an identical image that is split from the original.” Watch the baby grow.
A beck is a visual summons, specifically the gesture that people make when they beckon or “summon by gesture.” The phrase beck and call refers to both visual and vocal summonses. In the eggcorn “beckon call,” the base verb beckon is used as a modifier of the noun call, but this construction is grammatically incorrect. The correct form—if such was the intended meaning—would be “beckoning call.” The invitation “Come and get it!” is a beckoning call. “Run!” is not.
The phrase flesh out means “put skin on the skeleton” or “bring to life.” This comes from the metaphor of starting with the “bare bones” of an idea and adding the “meat” by fleshing out the details. The eggcorn in this instance, flush out, means “drive into the open” and does have its proper uses. For example: The hounds flushed the fox out of its burrow. Both flesh out and flush out relate to “revealing.” The distinction between the two is that flesh out reveals by adding (such as details) while flush out reveals by removing (such as the fox from its burrow).
That’s eggcorns in a nutshell—or eggshell, as the case may be. If you listen for the logic behind the words, it will guide you to the correct term or expression. Look for the acorn among the eggcorns.
