Audiology Eggcorns: When Misheard Words Take on a Life of Their Own

How many times have you heard a patient use an incorrect word during speech recognition testing? Hundreds? A search of any social media audiology group will quickly lead to hilarious responses from patients to common words audiologists present. For example, “loud” for “laud”.

But did you know there’s a term that is used specifically to describe words or phrases that are created due to mishearing or misunderstanding another word or phrase?  It’s called an “eggcorn”!

We’ve all heard them and probably said them: “Duck tape” for “Duct tape”; “doggy dog world” for “dog-eat-dog world”; or “mute point” for “moot point.” Other funny ones include “pass mustard” instead of “pass muster” or “pre-Madonna” for “prima donna”.

The term “eggcorn” was adopted in 2004 after a University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor saw the term “egg corn” used instead of “acorn” in a letter dated from 1844. If you would like to peruse a list of eggcorns, National Public Radio has collected quite an impressive one. 

Reference

Kleinman, B. (2024). What’s an “Eggcorn”? Word Smarts.

Memmott, M. (2015). Here are 100 “Eggcorns” that we say pass mustard.  NPR.