Can You Hear It Now?

A number of grammatical faux pas can be attributed to faulty hearing. I’m not implying that any of you are going deaf, only that when we speak we tend to run our words together. Lyrics and common phrases are often misunderstood. Remember the child who thought John was Jesus’s earthly dad? What else was Round John doing at the manger? A mondegreen of the phrase “round yon virgin” from “Silent Night” sounded like Round John to his young ears.

Recently, a retired pastor posed a question to a denominational network about the best way to dispose of his sizable library. “Do you give your books away,” he asked. “Or sell them in mass?”

The wiseacre in me wanted to respond, “Hmmm, not sure how open the Catholics would be to your hawking your Protestant tomes in their service, but you could give it a go.”

My better nature realized the pastor was writing what he’d heard, when what he meant was en masse—the adverb meaning in a body or as a whole. Borrowed from the French, en masse, does literally mean in a group, but English renders it en masse. In addition, the correct pronunciation is on mass.

You’ll want to avoid this and other eggcorns—misunderstanding and therefore miswriting of common phrases—in your writing. So here are a few others to watch out for:

• Not intensive purposes, but intents and purposes
• Not doggy dog world, but dog eat dog world
• Not butt naked, but buck naked
• Not beckon call, but beck and call
• Not road to hoe, but row to hoe

While this doesn’t technically qualify as an eggcorn, it’s not unusual to see someone write something like: “I coulda been there on time, if I woulda started earlier.” Sometimes the offense is written could of. While your ear may hear coulda or could of, the correct rendition is could have or more likely the contracted form could’ve.

Could, would, should, and must belong to the family of verbs. As auxiliary or helping verbs, they always occur in a phrase, along with other verbs. Of is a preposition, not a verb, so does not properly belong in a verb phrase with could, would or should.

Here’s to better hearing and error-free writing.

You can find more eggcorns at http://grammarist.com/mondegreens/