An eggcorn is when someone mistakes a word for a different word, often in the context of an idiom. It comes from the surprisingly common mistake of thinking the word "acorn" is actually "eggcorn".
Anyway, my favourite eggcorns are the ones that imply the existence of a powerful and mysterious animal, such as "and their elk" (instead of "and their ilk"), "from the gecko" (instead of "from the get-go'), and, most recently, "locust of control" (instead of "locus of control"). #linguistics
Follow
Years ago a columnist wrote that he'd been using what he thought was a local expression "costs a nominal egg" for years, before finally realizing what he'd learned was simply Bronx pronunciation for "costs an arm and a leg".
