Eggcorns Are Real: The Words and Phrases You've Probably Been Saying Wrong Forever

BuzzFeed just published a poll all about eggcorns, and it’s the most relatable internet moment of the week. An eggcorn is a phrase you’ve misheard and repeated wrong for years, like“nip it in the butt”instead of“nipped in the bud.”The term itself comes from“acorn,”which lots of people pronounce as“eggcorn.”The word has no e and no g. We did that.

Andrew Ziegler’s poll covers 18 phrases, including“all intensive purposes,”“from the gecko,”“chomping at the bit,”and“bold-faced lie,”and the big question is whether the wrong versions are actually more popular than the right ones. Spoiler: some of them absolutely are. The poll isn’t a quiz, so there are no points, just a lot of people suddenly realizing their parents handed down some creative grammar.

So now we need to know: which one do you refuse to correct? Is it“could of”?“Duck tape”?“Jerry-rigged”? Drop your most stubborn eggcorn in the comments and let’s see which one is truly undefeated.