Eggcorns

[Little Jack Horner]

I have been reading the Wikipedia item on eggcorns en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn#Examples and also this item:
www.documentcloud.org/documents/2090909-eggcorns.html
I am now confused as I had always thought an eggcorn was a play on words where an appropriately witty and similar sounding word or phrase was deliberately substituted for the original. A good example is the old-timers' disease mentioned in the Wikipedia article. But some of the examples in both the Wikipedia article and many of those in the Documentcloud article seem to me to simple mistakes or malapropisms that are not in the least amusing. Most seem to me to be more like mondegreens although mondegreens worthy of the name ought at least to bring a smile.

What others think? Am I missing something?

[Dave Miller]

I don’t think there's any requirement for an eggcorn to be witty or amusing. It just has to use word(s) which exist, and sound like the original word(s). Of course, many eggcorns turn out to be amusingly apposite and it is those which then become most famous.

There’s a clear difference between an eggcorn and a mondegreen: in an eggcorn, it is the speaker who uses the wrong word; in a mondegreen the speaker (or, often, singer) utters the right words, but the listener hears something different.

[Little Jack Horner]

I don’t quite follow, Dave. By your usage, the perpetrator of the eggcorn reproduces what has been misheard. The perpetrator of the mondegreen reproduces what has been misheard. No?

[Dave Miller]

Er ... you’re right! I hadn't thought of it like that.

[Little Jack Horner]

If I mishear a song and sing it silently to myself is it a mondegreen? How would I know? I may discover the correct words later so does what I first thought correct (but was not) then become a mondegreen even though it had not been uttered or written down? Does a falling tree make a sound if there is no-one to hear it? What happens if the tree falls while a tape recorder is active and the recording is later played back and I hear it? When did the falling tree make the sound?

What if I have nothing better to do than think of things like this? I can go and make a coffee, I suppose. 

[Verbivore]

LJH: Are you sure you're not suffering the effects of COVID-isolation? Have you had visions of Schrödinger's cat lately?

My idea of managing lockdown has been to learn how to bake an edible scone and to make clotted cream.

To date:
Scones ✓ 
Clotted cream X

Because of my numerous failures to clot the cream, I've been feasting on too many fluffy scone test runs.