Golly, how many times have I cringed when somebody says, “For all intensive purposes…”

Yet is the error actually cringe-worthy? If you think about it, “for all intensive purposes” makes just as much, if not more sense as the standard phrase “for all intents and purposes.” The former, a spontaneous reshaping of a known expression, is called an eggcorn.

The term eggcorn was coined by UPenn linguist Mark Liberman, on Language Log, after a reader misspelled/mistook the word acorn as eggcorn. As an acorn actually has the shape of an egg, Liberman reasoned, the term eggcorn actually makes sense (that is, it’s not a malapropism, or a mondegreen, or a folk etymology).

Check out the procrastination-worthy Eggcorn Database, on which I found:

  • jar-dropping (for jaw-dropping)
  • mindgrain (for migraine)
  • strum up support (for drum up support)
  • a mute point (for a moot point)
  • Old-Timers (for Alzheimer’s)
  • wild awake (for wide awake)

And with that, I’ll say bye and bye!

(Photo from Flickr, by HatHome)