Yvonne, I am liable to commit eggcorns, as well as mondegreens (mishearing whole phrases such as in song lyrics).

I don't know whether this is an eggcorn or what: People say "babyback ribs" for the rack of small ribs that are primarily used in barbecuing, running together baby and back instead of pausing between them. I figured the spelling should reflect the actual pronunciation, so 'babyback' is the way I spelled it for the longest time. But apparently the proper spelling is still two separate words, although I don't think I've heard anyone in a very long time put the emphasis fully on 'back'. If the word 'small' was substituted for 'baby' I don't think people would run the words together to make 'smallback'. It's the alliteration that is to blame. Babyback sounds silly to me, but often one has to bow to the inevitable and adopt the silly pronunciation/expression to effectively communicate with people who already say it that way. That's how language changes, after all.

This takes me back to our discussions of how we pronounce words differently. While some of those examples make perfect sense to me (mute point, boggled down) in my Aussie accent I don't think I could ever think it was 'bowl in a china shop' or 'eggcorn'.

Having said that, however, my two sons always pronounced ball and bowl the same when they were small and claimed they couldn't tell the difference when I said them :)

An old chestnut in the UK concerns some of the words in our National Anthem. One line goes "send her victorious happy and glorious . . ." it is often claimed that children hear it as "send her Victorias" A Victoria is the name of a popular variety of plum.

Vee, that reminds me of Son#1 when he was about ten years old singing Jethro Tull's 'Aqualung'. He substituted:

slob for sod (You poor old sod, you see it's only me)

fog for bog (he goes down to the bog to warm his feet)

and donkey for dog end (as he bends to pick a dog end).

He thought I was pulling his leg when I told him the actual words. They made no sense to him. Explaining the meaning of 'sod' was uncomfortable for me!

I suppose those are mondegreens rather than eggcorns, though.

I have trouble thinking of good examples of eggcorns, but one that always comes to my mind is 'ad homonym' for ad hominem. That's not one of mine, I'm sorry to say since I think it's splendid!

Frieda, I just attempted to listen to Aqualung and could make out none of the words, so full marks to your son for getting most of them right . . . and even more marks to you for trying to explain the meaning of 'sod' . . . as you know over here it is just used inaccurately to describe an idiot/fool. It isn't necessary for the person so portrayed to actual be a sodomite. The same as when calling someone a 'silly bugger' isn't referring to them doing unnatural things with animals. Sometimes more should be less!

Can you understand these words?

Vee, I understand the pronunciation of every word in the song 'Aqualung' as well as all the words in the other songs on the whole 1971 album. It took me years, however, to figure out the meanings of the words. Of course I've only listened to the album thousands of times in the past 44 years. It has great sentimental value to me because it was my first husband's favorite album. I don't have as much stamina for listening to other progressive rock, though.

I've been reading through The Eggcorn Database and have instantly recognized many of the eggcorns that I have committed myself. Actually, it's comforting to know that other people make the same mistakes. :-)

Yvonne and Vee, it occurred to me recently (then I forgot about it) that when the speech and writing of young folk is referred to -- by the young themselves -- as 'youthamism' (or 'youthanism' -- I've seen both spellings) it is newly coined slang for what was called 'youthspeak' in the 1960s and '70s in the style of Orwell's newspeak. For a while I thought youthamism was an eggcorn for euphemism. At the Eggcorn Database (linked in my prior post) there is discussion of the euphemism/youthamism angle. That site's analysts think there is some cross-pollination with 'euthanize' as well. I still think there is an eggcorn element with some writers, but not all. Many write 'youthamism' and that is exactly what they mean.

Vee, would the pronunciation in Estuary English be /yoofamism/? (If the EE speakers use the expression, that is.)

Briefly returning to the oh-so-English words in 'Aqualung': Vee, when we were listening to English bands/singers forty to fifty years ago, we Americans half the time didn't know what the lyrics meant. When AM Top 40 radio was censored (mostly for sex and drug references) some lyrics had to be cleaned up, such as the line "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" ('Light My Fire', The Doors). But Paul McCartney's line about "fish and finger pies" in 'Penny Lane' was left intact because even overzealous censors didn't catch it, no doubt to McCartney's glee. Your English singers could get by our censors quite easily.

Frieda, I think many of our 'yoofs' and nor just from S E England would say that, not that they would know or understand the meaning of many 'isms'.
I'm not the person to ask about pop music/culture. It has more or less passed me by. Locked in boarding school for eight years with no TV or radio and certainly never allowed to listen to 'pop' at home, which incidentally was almost nonexistent on the BBC back then. Was never into groups or bands when young, nor were any of my friends. Am I the only old saddo here at RP?!
Asked DH about the 'rude' meanings of 'Penny Lane' and he didn't/hadn't 'seen' them.

DH used to say "It's OK, they're beinhave" - (no idea how to spell it) a combination of "being" and "behave". Context = The dogs are happy being outside and they are behaving themselves.

Don't know what to call it, not an eggcorn (I love those!) but a pairing of words where the sum is more than the two individual parts to create our unique in-house verb :-)

Malna, in linguistics that phenomenon of taking two words and combining their meanings and blending their sounds into one word is called a 'portmanteau'. Your DH's creation makes perfect sense when you know the context!

My older son responded to my telling him to behave with, "Mom, I am /hayving/." I thought this was funny and original, but it turns out that my brilliant son was just a normal kid making a common word formation -- kids being more logical than adults. :-)

Vee, I wonder if English young people originated the term 'youthamism' because of their pronunciation of /yoof/ for youth and the similarity of the sound in euphemism. Young Americans, as far as I know, haven't adopted wholesale the shift of soft /th/ to the f-sound ... yet. It remains to be seen if they will. The etymology of slang words is seldom straightforward, except in a few cases such as that of Orwell's newspeak and in the seemingly well-documented Australian origin of the word 'selfie'.

Well, I'm sure not all music has passed by you -- maybe just the 'popular' types heard via the radio and other electronic 'noisemakers'. There's a theory that most people's taste in music tends to form between the ages of 10 and 25; so what you hear during those years will usually be the bedrock of what will always be your favorite styles of music. The eight years you spent at boarding school fell somewhere within that range of years, didn't they? It seems like deprivation of a sort to me to have been without variety in music, but perhaps it didn't bother you, particularly. I think it's interesting that you did pick right up on watching television once it was available to you but you didn't pick up listening to music. Everyone's experiences are unique, though. Maybe you are more visual than aural in your preferences.

Do you mean that your DH had never heard the naughty expression of 'finger pie'? Oh dear, I didn't realize that so many of the things I heard from my English friends were not common cultural knowledge. ;-)

Frieda, re 'youthamism' . Though I don't doubt the term, I have never heard it used by anyone even 'the young' . . but then the 'youth' I meet in this neck-of-the-woods talk in grunt language as do their brothers and sisters world-wide.
The sort of music I was exposed to as a young person was classical, not pop. The 'wireless' broadcast pre-lunchtime concerts (nothing too 'heavy') , we were taken to the ballet and some light opera and popular 'musicals'. My father, who had a good voice, had been a big fan of Gilbert and Sullivan and had taken 'walk-on' parts as a young man when the d'Oyly Carte company made their annual visit to the theatre. In those days the co. could not afford a huge cast of singers and even used 'locals' to make up the orchestra numbers.
'Music' at school consisted of 'singing' from the age of 4 upwards (is/was this the same in the US/Aus?) a school orchestra where I scrapped at the violin (vile-din as it was known by the family) and later by tedious practice of Plain Chant and hymns!
I think no music of any kind would make for a limited life-experience. My DH seems to have come from a home where no-one sung or hummed or whistled and has never been able to 'hold a tune' and has NO sense of rhythm, can't/wont dance. I have wondered if there is a connection.

Had to look up 'fish pie' and every site where it is mentioned originates in the US although one claims it to be a Northern English vulgar expression, which lets us Southerners off the hook!

Vee, I doubt the lack of home music is the source of your husband's lack of musical ability. I can't carry a tune in a bucket (local expression), but my dad sang and whistled a lot and all his sisters could both sing and dance beautifully. On my mother's side, one aunt had a lovely voice but the others not so much. My sister can sing a little; my brothers and I not at all. My daughter sings, but so could her dad.

I think those musical tendancies are very much genetic.

And speaking of singing....it brings to mind that old Mark Twain-ism:

"Never try to teach a pig to sing,

It frustrates you and annoys the h*ll out of the pig ! "

Vee, I think singing starts in most U.S. schools in pre-Kindergarten at about age 4 and it continues until about third grade (age 8). But then, for some reason, singing drops off and instrument-playing takes over in the standard music class. Kids start on wooden (or plastic these days) recorders and those who show any aptitude can go on to learn 'real' instruments. I'm not sure what the alternative is for the students who aren't musically inclined. It's usually not until high school that singing is offered again as an elective class, and this seems to be mostly for those students who are not in band/orchestra. Some kids, of course, take private singing/music lessons after school hours.

Unfortunately music is one of the first subjects to go (along with art) when the school boards are cutting costs or the districts are trying to improve academic ratings The thinking seems to be: cram in more mathematics and science as music and art aren't as important.

I can carry a tune but I'm not an especially good singer. I do have a good ear for music and a bit of a knack for playing a variety of instruments. I like voices that are natural and not over-trained. Any singer who overuses vibrato and tremolo gets on my nerves, probably because I have accompanied too many of them! I cringe when asked to play for any dentist-drill soprano. I love the mezzos and altos, though. But I have to admit that I'm biased in favor of male singers. I can take even most of the screamers and falsetto. :-)

My mother was trained for many years to be a musician.
Do you think we girls had the benefit of all the expense lavished on lessons, not only on the piano but also on singing, the violin and banjo and being taken to London's West End operettas etc. by my grandparents.
Not a note! She said she was sick of hearing scales and my grandparents were sick of having a piano which was never used, regularly tuned so sold it!

Ann, perhaps you acquired a sense of music just through your connection to a tuneful parent?
I think many English children's first taste of music/singing would have come from school 'religious assembly' compulsory for all the pupils back then . . . I don't know if it still is . . . In my day each child, once old enough, would be issued with a hymn book and taught to join in with the singing. As hymns have short verses and simple tunes it is an excellent way to 'keep the beat' to say nothing of expanding the lungs first thing in the morning. Recorder groups were/are often used as an accompaniment .
The only children who did not attend were RC's and Jehovah's Witnesses.
In the village school attend by our children there were about 40 pupils and 13 of them were JW's! They were not allowed to take part in any Christmas/Easter plays, parties, functions. These kids are now grown up but cannot take 'full-time' jobs as they still have to spend so many hours a week knocking on doors checking to see if we have been Saved. I must say they all have very nice manners and don't seem to mind if we don't take the 'Watch Tower'.

Annpan, it seems a pity, in a way, to me, that you and your sisters didn't benefit more from your mother's musical training, but perhaps by the time all of you came along, she was a bit burnt-out! It happens even with the most ardent musicians. And some of them, although they are very good musicians themselves, don't have the inclination or patience to teach music.

I'm sure I've told many times how my mother was a theatre organist and then our church organist for decades. She also taught piano in our house and was kindly permitted by officials and parishioners to teach the organ in the church sanctuary. At various times we had as many as five pianos in our house: yin and yang grand pianos in the 'music room'; a baby grand in the formal living room; an old upright in the basement rumpus room which my brothers modified to sound rinky-tink by driving brass tacks into the hammers so that the tacks directly hit the strings -- perfect for ragtime! Mother also had a spinet in the parental bedroom, apparently in case inspiration to play hit her in the middle of the night -- which it did occasionally. Our father was a very tolerant man. Ahem!

Anyway, Mother taught hundreds, if not thousands, of keyboard students over the years and her patience seemed infinite with them (not so much with my brothers and me because we were boneheaded and wanted to improvise). I found out the secret to her patience for dealing with less talented students: ear plugs! She could still hear because she kept one loosely placed but the assault was at least muffled.

Vee, you are right about the connection through my mother in my childhood. Dad was away for five war years serving in the Army.
She enjoyed all kinds of music from opera to rock 'n' roll when it first was introduced. When we lived with grandparents during the war, we played their large collection of old records of Music Hall songs. We listened to radio concerts, popular dance music, light organ music and Billy Cotton's Band Show etc.
A wide education indeed!

Hmmm. Vee, I think you, Annpan, and I were composing and posting at about the same time. Earlier I didn't see your post before mine or Annpan's after.

I don't know much about Jehovah's Witnesses but I do find the literature they've left on the front door mat or in the letter slot. I read it because ... well, I'll read just about anything when I'm curious. Their children probably opt out of various U.S. school traditions as well, such as saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Our State-run schools no longer include prayers and hymns in morning assemblies.

I don't recall singing regular hymns when I was in school but there was no proscription of singing about 'The Little Drummer Boy' or 'Put Your Hand in the Hand' or 'Wings of a Snow White Dove' or Norman Greenbaum's 'Spirit in the Sky' which are undoubtedly spiritual. I even recall one assembly opening with Eric Burdon and the Animals' rendition of Bury my body/Lord I don't care where ... /'Cause my soul's gonna live with God/ oh, oh, oh yeah. (I think the original was by John Lee Hooker.)

It was probably you or Annpan who related that you had sung "Morning Has Broken" in school long before Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam made his recording. That one hadn't crossed the Atlantic, as far as I know, until Mr. Stevens/Islam became well known stateside. Apparently it was something that he remembered singing when he was at school in London.

Did you all have a local 'Palais'? I went to the Hammersmith Palais a few times. I think The Kinks/Ray Davies' song 'Come Dancing' about his sister is quite affecting with its nostalgic references:

They put a parking lot on a piece of land
Where the supermarket used to stand.
Before that they put up a bowling alley
On the site that used to be the local Palais
That's where the big bands used to come and play.
My sister went there on a Saturday.

Come dancing
All her boyfriends used to come and call
Why not come dancing
It's only natural.

n.b. I just read about Ray Davies who grew up in Muswell Hill. He had six older sisters (plus his younger brother Dave, of course). The sister who gave him his first guitar died at age 21, apparently of an undiagnosed heart condition, on an evening when she went out dancing. I knew it was a wistful song, but I had no inkling that it was that sad because Davies sings later in the lyrics about his sister (maybe it was another of his sisters) getting married and living on an estate.

No 'Palais' where I grew up in Middle England (a phrase made popular by Tony Blair) and even if there had been one I would never have been allowed to go! The nearest thing would have been college
hops . . . that word dates me . . . I suppose they are all disco's now.
Frieda, just checked on Ray Davies, about who I knew nothing(!) and realised I recognised both 'Waterloo Sunset' and 'Summer Afternoon'; for me that is saying something.
Below is a youtube thing on 'Come Dancing' for anyone interested in that post-war bygone era.
nb. the bloke selling 'items' on the street corner and then taking the girl dancing is what was known as a 'Spiv'; someone who could supply black-market nylons, watches etc. No questions asked.

Come Dancing

Sadly I never went dancing when I was single. I had no boyfriend so wouldn't go alone. I did go to a dance in the Royal Pavilion held by the Civil Service Social Club, when I worked in a Civil Service Dept. and sat out the whole evening!
I only went because of the Heyer "Regency Buck" connection and wanted to see the place as a dance venue rather than part of the Visitor's Tour.

I thought I had a restricted time as a single girl as I had to be home by 10.30pm but I seemed to have had a lot more freedom than you, Vee! Even that chafed me and probably had a lot to do with my liking to travel
At least no one told me when to be indoors when I was touring around!

Ann, you are right about 'freedom'. At least when I was at boarding school none of us had any 'freedom' at all, everywhere you went, other than lessons, you were supervised/watched. A nun was always keeping an eye on you during meals, while you did your homework, walking up and down in the dormitories while girls got ready for bed . . . in small separate 'cubicles' . . . They decided if and when you could go outside ie into the fresh air, which was seldom, then everyone went out. Most of our free time was spent sitting in a 'common room', again always 'watched' by a nun! The only place to be alone was the loo . . .and even then you had to ask permission to go.
No wonder I am quite happy with my own company.
At least we were all in it 'together'. Had I been at home my Father would have been most unlikely to let me go 'out' in the evening. No-one would have questioned my brothers, though wisely they did all their socialising at the homes of friends and reported back that other families sat about talking to each other/chatting/discussing things etc.

Vee, do you think your boarding school experience was typical or atypical of most English girls' education at the time? I ask because I've spoken of your descriptions to an English friend whom I knew to have attended an RC boarding school in, if I recall correctly, one of the Home Counties (I'll have to ask her again to verify that). She laughed and said she recognized some of what you have related, but she thinks your school was much stricter than hers. She was born in 1953 and that might indicate a reason for the differences. My Yorkshire friends (born in the late 1940s and early '50s) attended regular schools and they have the opinion that boarding schools of their time were 'medieval'. :-)

Did you have to take off your shoes when you attended 'hops' in college?

I recall that one of the characters in Dennis Potter's 'Lipstick on Your Collar' TV series -- the sultry, slutty wife of a serviceman that the main character (played by Ewan McGregor) lusted after -- mentions wanting to go to the 'Palais'. The setting is London, 1956, so I imagine she's talking about the Hammersmith Palais. It's an error, I think, to have included Connie Francis's song -- much less giving the song title to the series -- because the song didn't come out until 1959!

We were quite ecumenical growing up in Atlanta, GA in the 1940's and 50's. I remember particularly the Xmas season and how school programs balanced Xmas carols with Hanukkah songs. (The city had a large Jewish population and many were "movers and shakers", owners of large stores, mercantile interests, etc.). Of course, we were quite segregated and there were no Latinos. In fifth grade, we had a real "battle ax" of a spinster who had us singing daily: patriotic songs, some hymns, and a few classics, as well as our state song. We knew by heart the theme songs of the Marines, the Army, and the Navy, as we were just recovering from WW II. some of our schoolmates had lost their fathers recently and great care was lavished upon these students.

Vee, I got the following when I tried to listen to Come Dancing:

This video contains content from SME, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

And I was planning to make my very own copy and sell it!

Carolyn, I got the same message.

However, I know the video because I've watched it many times. It tickles me that Ray Davies plays the 'oily' boyfriend -- the 'spiv'. Thanks, Vee, for providing the right word. And Dave Davies appears as the guitarist on the far right in the 'Big Band'. The Kinks -- and Ray Davies especially -- are known for being quintessentially English, witness 'Waterloo Sunset'. I love 'Dead End Street' as well, which has a nifty video that goes with it. (I can't get the link I wanted to make stick.) Anyway, The Kinks pioneered music videos that enacted the stories their songs told.

So many of the English rock bands of that era were trying to be blues bands because they admired American R&B singers and musicians, but the Davies brothers' influences were rooted in Big Band and Music Hall. However, they put their own stamp on rock 'n' roll because Ray was such a good composer and nobody played electric guitar like Dave. Their popularity was on the ebb while I was in the UK but they had a resurgence in the early 1980s, particularly in the U.S., I think, which is ironic because Ray admitted that he disliked and distrusted the U.S.

Disclosure: The reason I am familiar with so many English performers of that era: it was part of my 'beat' to interview them. I met quite a number of '60s band members, most of whom were on the wane in the 1970s when I was there. I was not a groupie.