Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker ShiraG: "What 'eggcorn(s)' have you used/misunderstood at some point in your life? For example, in elementary school and middle school, I heard a lot of gym teachers tell us to stand 'shoulder with the part' and couldn't figure out what on earth that meant. At some point I saw it written down, and realized that they had been saying 'shoulder width apart' the whole time. Epiphany."

[Deaf readers who may not have had this exact experience are welcome to reinterpret the question as appropriate, e.g. What idiom completely flummoxed you the first time you encountered it?]

I'm sure this has happened to me dozens of times in my life, but the two that spring immediately to mind are:

1) When I was really little, I thought matzo ball soup was actually called mothball soup. I didn't understand why anyone would want to eat it. (I now love matzo ball soup, btw.)

2) The Lutheran Confession of Sins and Absolution is:

"O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee and justly deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them; and I pray Thee of Thy boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful, being."

Every week this is intoned by the whole congregation during the service. (To this day, I remember exactly where the "breath breaks" were: "O almighty God, merciful Father (breathe!), I, a poor miserable sinner (breathe!)…") I had it memorized before I could read it.

For many years, I wondered why we were all confessing that we were "hardly" sorry for our sins.

Funnily enough, I know of at least one other person with whom I grew up who thought the same thing, and I've met two Lutherans since who laughed with recognition when I shared that story.