Mondegreens and Eggcorns

"*Fast paste personality, highly creative, team spirit"

Do you have a fast paste personality?

Huh?

Don't worry. This is a classic mondegreen from a listserve I was reading yesterday. The writer, a woman whose native language is not English, misheard the actual word in the phrase "fast-paced" and concluded that the word was "paste." She's probably been writing it that way for years.

Children are the source of many mondegreens. The one I like best is the first line of The Star-Spangled Banner, "Jose, can you see?" Makes sense to me!

Our minds try to decipher what our ears hear. Most of the time, the context will help us out. Sometimes, our brains come to a mistaken conclusion, but there's some logic involved nonetheless. If many people come to the same wrong conclusion and a new usage emerges, it is called an eggcorn.

An example? How about in the rears instead of in arrears? Arrears is an accounting term to describe someone who is behind in payment, but many people who aren't familiar with the accounting term have concluded that to be behind in payment is to be in the rears. This phrase can be found on many forums discussing alimony and other court-ordered payments. If it keeps showing up all over the Internet, there is a good chance that it will become an established usage.

By the way, eggcorns and mondegreens are classic examples of errors that are not found by spell checkers. All the words are spelled correctly, but they're the wrong words for the context.

Most of us use eggcorns without ever knowing what the original phrase was. We're totally unaware that we're making a mistake. Don't believe me? I invite you to visit the Eggcorns
site and take a look around. It has a delightful collection of eggcorns heard in the wild.

Have fun!