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For all intensive purposes? Or for all intents AND purposes? Coming down the pipe or down the pike? On tenterhooks or tenderhooks?
The English language is full of colorful phrases for any scenario. But there are plenty that people say everyday that are simply incorrect. On today's episode of The List Show, we're covering these misspoken phrases which still sort of make sense, AKA eggcorns.
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15 Phrases You're Saying Wrong | Mental Floss
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0:00
Brace yourself. I'm about to say something really controversial. For all intensive purposes
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If you're sensitive to language mistakes, you're probably somewhere between irked and infuriated right now. And if you're thinking, wait, what mistake? I've got some bad news
0:14
You're saying it wrong. It's for all intense and purposes. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, Editor-in-Chief of Mental Floss. For all intensive purposes is what's known
0:22
as an egg corn, a mistaken word or phrase that makes almost as much sense as the correct version
0:26
The term egg corn was coined by linguist Jeff Pullum in 2003 as a nod to people's habit
0:31
of mistaking the word acorn for egg corn. You could feasibly argue that acorns evoke eggs and corn kernels
0:37
Feasible arguments are a big element of egg corns. There's no overlord deciding which language errors are logical enough to be official egg
0:44
corns and which ones are just plain mistakes. If you can kind of see how it happened, feel free to call it an egg corn
0:49
Without further ado, welcome to the egg corn episode of The List Show. We're diving deep into all our favorite phrasal gaps, from death nails and tender hooks to
0:58
bold-faced lies and beyond. Who knows, you might even decide that the right versions are kind of overrated
1:04
Let's get started. Back to intents and purposes. The expression has roots in a 16th century act of parliament that mentioned, to all intents
1:17
constructions and purposes. It's part of a long tradition of lawmakers and legal professionals trying to cover
1:22
all angles of the matter at hand. Null and void, aiding and abetting, etc
1:27
Constructions didn't have staying power, but the rest of the phrase got lodged in the general
1:31
lexicon. For all intents and purposes essentially means, well, essentially. You use it to make the
1:36
point that a given thing is effectively the same as something else, even if it's not literally so
1:41
You might consider your mom's favorite cousin to be, for all intents and purposes, your aunt
1:46
The expression doesn't mean much if you separate it word by word. Intense, for all intents and
1:51
purposes are purposes. And since the expression is more than the sum of its parts, it's easy to
1:56
get the parts a little wrong. Hence, for all intensive purposes. The word intensive means
2:01
marked by intensity or tending to strengthen or increase. So for all intensive purposes doesn't
2:06
really make sense. But it doesn't not make sense. You could argue that intensive purposes are the
2:11
most important purposes. They're marked by intensity, ever strengthening. Your mom's cousin
2:16
who serves the most intensive purposes of an aunt is for all intensive purposes an aunt And now I said these words so many times that they lost all meaning Coleslaw The term derives from the Dutch word coleslaw a truncated version of colsalad cabbage salad in English Since coleslaw like most salads
2:33
is traditionally served cold, calling it coleslaw seems a little redundant. But it's not inaccurate
2:38
nor is it a new mistake. Coleslaw was already in print by the late 18th century
2:43
not to mention that it might occasionally help to clarify cold. Hot slaw is also a thing
2:49
The bald-faced in Bald Faced Lie is a variant of Bare Faced, which was first coined by Shakespeare
2:54
in 1590 to describe a young man without a beard in Midsummer Night's Dream. In other words
2:59
the lie is as plain to see as a clean-shaven, maskless face. But Bold Faced has existed since
3:05
around the same time. Shakespeare used it in Henry VI Part I. And if you're telling an obvious lie
3:09
chances are good that you're doing it with a pretty bold face. It's also possible that people these days assume the boldface in question is a typeface
3:17
A lie printed in bold would be especially apparent. So while bald-faced is considered correct, it's hard to say that bold-faced isn't just
3:24
as apt. Hunger Pains is an apt description for the cramps you get when you're ravenous
3:28
Technically they're called hunger pangs, but the word pang, per the Oxford English Dictionary
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describes a sudden sharp spasm of pain which grips the body or part of it
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So using hunger pains shouldn't get you into too much trouble with the word police
3:41
But saying tender hooks might. What you mean is tenter hooks. In the late medieval period and beyond, you'd stretch your freshly milled cloth over a wooden
3:49
frame called a tenter so it wouldn't shrink as it dried. Tenter hooks were the hooks or bent nails that held the cloth in place
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A piece of cloth on tenter hooks is in a state of tension, which explains why we say we're
3:59
on tenter hooks when we're experiencing tense anticipation or suspense. Since people these days are generally more familiar with the word tender than tenter
4:08
Tenderhooks sometimes gets mistaken for tenderhooks, which isn't a word at all
4:12
If it were, though, it might describe hooks made to hold tender cuts of meat, and you'd
4:16
probably feel pretty tense if you were stuck on one of those. Tenderhooks is a fossil word, a word only preserved in an idiom or some other very specific instance
4:25
If not for being on tenterhooks, we might never utter the word tenterhooks again
4:29
Another fossil word is the knell of death knell. Originally, a knell could be the sound of any bell, but the word often referred to the
4:35
solemn bell ringing after a death or funeral. A death knell specifically marked a person's death
4:40
and the phrase eventually caught on to describe a figurative marker of any end A business can have a death knell a relationship can have a death knell and so on But people sometimes say death nail instead You can probably chalk this up to knell fossil status These days the general public doesn know what a knell is
4:56
so they unwittingly swap it out for something they do know. A nail is a natural fit for two reasons
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One, nail sounds a lot like knell. And two, it features in the final nail in the coffin
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another death-related expression about the end of something. When I said chalk this up a few seconds ago, did you picture the word chalk or the word chalk
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Hopefully the former. Here's why. Long before the digital age, establishments like stores and bars often kept track of customers' tabs by writing them in chalk
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To chalk it up was to charge via chalk tally. By the mid-20th century
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people had started using the expression figuratively. Say, for example, someone hits
5:30
the bullseye the first time you ever throw a dart and you chalk it up to beginner's luck
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Picture a big chalkboard with beginner's luck written on it, and you're adding a line to its tally
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Chalk — C-H-O-C-K — has nothing to do with it. A chalk is a wedge used to prevent something like
5:43
the wheel of a car from moving. The chalk of chalk-full, meanwhile, is believed to be a variant
5:48
of choke. To be chalk-full in the Oxford English Dictionary's words is to be full to the point of
5:53
choking. Are you chalk-full of egg-corns yet? Happy as a clam is another expression that probably
5:58
gets botched because nobody remembers its original context. It's thought to be short for happy as a
6:03
a clam at high tide. At low tide, the mollusks are much more likely to get plucked from the
6:08
sand by clam harvesters. But the short version makes no sense if you never knew the long
6:12
version, which may explain why some people say happy as a clown instead. After all, clowns
6:17
are known for being jolly, even if their antics don't always spark joy
6:22
You might describe a longstanding fear of clowns as deep-seated, meaning it's tough
6:26
to get rid of because its seat, aka its central power, is deep below the surface. It's easy
6:31
to see why so many people mistake the term for deep-seeded, which also implies that something
6:36
is tough to get rid of because its seeds were planted deep below the surface. But since
6:40
seeded and seeded sound the same aloud, you can really only tell if someone's using the
6:43
correct word in print. It's the same story with hurdle-along and hurdle-along. Hurdle with a T means to move
6:50
rapidly or forcefully in Merriam-Webster's words. Hurdle with a D means to leap over
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especially while running. Hurdle is a transitive verb, which means it needs a direct object
7:00
In other words, you can't just hurdle along, you have to hurdle something like an obstacle or a barrier So if you hurtling along you doing it with a T And if you making a last effort to hurdle an obstacle you doing both with a D The phrase last effort is a reference to the military tradition of defending your
7:17
territory to the death, even when invaders have reached your very last trenches. The
7:21
similar expression, die in the last ditch, has been around since the early 18th century
7:25
Last-stitch effort, though technically incorrect, evokes a similar sense of 11th-hour determination
7:30
and futility. If there's only a single stitch holding your pants together, it's probably working
7:35
quite hard to keep them from separating. When the word rap arrived on the scene in the 14th century
7:40
it described a physical blow, as in a rap across the knuckles, a later phrase that sheds light on
7:46
how rap became associated with punishment and then a prison sentence. Think rap sheet. But rap came
7:51
to accommodate verbal blows too. And if people are constantly talking negatively about you
7:56
especially unfairly, you're said to have a bad rap. You probably also have a bad reputation
8:02
which explains why so many people say bad rep when what they mean is bad rap
8:07
The pike in coming down the pike refers to a turnpike, a central road or expressway
8:12
If something's coming down the pike, it's en route and moving fast. In other words
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it'll arrive soon. Mistaking pike for pipe in this phrase is totally understandable
8:21
The word sounds similar and something coming down the pipe seems like it'll arrive soon
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Not to mention that the phrase in the pipeline also refers to stuff in the works
8:29
Let's end with a couple standout comments on a short video we made about egg corns a while back
8:34
One viewer mentioned that hair's breadth, as in the width of a piece of hair, has been mistaken
8:38
for hair's breadth, as in the exhale of a rabbit-like animal. Hair's breadth is a metaphor
8:43
for a barely perceptible amount, and a little woodland creature's breath is probably pretty
8:47
hard to discern too. Another viewer said they used to think that the meat of Make Ends Meat
8:52
was spelled M-E-A-T, as in you're so poor that you can only buy the butcher's last scraps
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aka the ends meet. It's unclear what ends were originally meeting in the correct version of the
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phrase, which means you're meeting your basic needs with whatever scant resources you have
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One popular theory involves bookkeeping. If the number at the end of the income column matches
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the one in the expense column, you're making ends meet in more ways than one. Other people think
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it's a tailoring reference. You can only afford enough material for a garment just to make its
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ends meet around the wearer. Both good theories, but neither is quite as fun as ends meet
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That's all for this episode of The List Show. How many of these phrases were you saying wrong
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Let us know in the comments. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time
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