Template talk:eggcorn of

RFM discussion: February 2018–May 2020

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

Template:eggcorn of into Template:misconstruction of

...keeping the redirect. Or is there a sensible distinction between the two that we want to maintain? - -sche (discuss) 18:43, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

I was hesitant to recreate CAT:English misconstructions, but labelling evolutionary stable strategy as an "eggcorn" seems like a stretch. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 18:47, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh wait, that's not what you're suggesting. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 18:47, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

I changed the eggcorn template to categorize into the misconstruction category, emptying Category:English eggcorns and Category:Vietnamese eggcorns, although that should be undone if there is some distinction I am missing that it would be good and feasible to maintain. - -sche (discuss) 18:49, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, I feel that there's a semantic aspect to eggcorns that isn't really present in evolutionary stable strategy, trompe-d'œil or analysises. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 18:53, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

True, but that distinction seems a bit fuzzy; e.g., dominate is labelled an eggcorn (because it's homographic to a valid word?) while unfortunant is labelled a misconstruction. And evolutionary in evolutionary stable strategy is also a word. (But I'm not opposed to making a dinstinction; I'm just pointing out the issues with it, devil's-advocate-style.) - -sche (discuss) 19:25, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@-sche: I agree that the distinction is fuzzy (in fact, I'd even say that the distinction between "misconstructed", "nonstandard" and "proscribed" is fuzzy: compare our treatment of developmentation, abortation and pronounciate). Still, I think it's not entirely without merit, although I would be hard pressed to give you a specific set of criteria.

I wouldn't call dominate an eggcorn, but without any quotation it's hard to judge anyway. In fact, I'm going to RFV it. not necessary: it's used indeed.

Another thing: I don't like the way idiosyncratic is used in our def of eggcorn. It seems to be used as a synonym of "odd, strange, peculiar, eccentric", but it shouldn't be. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 20:02, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

orange is a result of misconstruction of naranga, isn't it? But orange is certainly not nonstandard. (Other cases of loss of juncture are apron, newt, nickname) Though misconstructions may tend to be nonstandard (for all intensive purposes, at least), they can become standard over time, as with many "errors". DCDuring (talk) 20:09, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

It's specifically a rebracketing/metanalysis, which you could say is a type of misconstruction. However, I certainly wouldn't want to label orange as a misconstruction; that's true diachronically, but not synchronically. I do want to label it as a rebracketing, though. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 20:21, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

It's hard to find references rather than intuition to support classifying terms one way or another, but I suppose the difference between developmentation and pronounciate vs unfortunant and dominate is that I think the first two are intentional (jocular) errors and the second two are unintentional. If we keep the categories separate, should "eggcorns" be a subcategory of "misconstructions" or a "sibling category" on the same level (cross-linked)? - -sche (discuss) 20:39, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

And then there are entries like firstable which only say they're eggcorns in the etymology, not the definition... - -sche (discuss) 21:06, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

April 2020 duplicate discussion: Template:eggcorn of

To Template:misconstruction of.

Discussion moved from #Template:eggcorn of.

"Eggcorn" is a lovely term for our own amusement, but it is an inside joke that makes Wiktionary more closed to normal users. I believe that a term like misconstruction is more understandable to normal people and includes all eggcorns, mondegreens, etc. DCDuring (talk) 19:52, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

A Google search for eggcorn brings up Wikipedia for the first entry. A Google search for misconstruction brings up "is misconstruction a real word" and dictionaries. Eggcorn might be slightly whimsical, but misconstruction is not a word used by normal people.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, the whole concept is not discussed by "normal people". Misconstruction is immediately understandable to the average educated English speaker, even if they've never heard the term before; eggcorn isn't. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:14, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Keep as is. It links to the entry eggcorn, so users are never more than a click away from comprehension. If you think it's an inside joke, then the in-group is all of linguistics, and we might apply the same logic to eliminating the word illative from our entries — only linguists know what it means, and why should we use the most exact word when a vaguer one might do? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:17, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Keep. I don't like dumbing things down to appeal to the broadest population possible. What about the people who want more precise information, or who want to learn whimsical words to describe things? I'm quite happy with us filling a niche that other dictionaries don't fill, since that's why I use Wiktionary in the first place. Besides, the kind of people who aren't interested in expanding their vocabulary tend not to look up words in the dictionary very much anyway. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:02, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

FWIW I proposed something similar earlier / further up the page, #Template:eggcorn_of_into_Template:misconstruction_of. I think the issue is less that the term is opaque, and more that the distinction is fuzzy/questionable, compare my comments above. - -sche (discuss) 17:35, 3 May 2020 (UTC)