A word or phrase that results from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another — particularly one that makes its own kind of sense, such as 'for all intensive purposes'.

Named after a real-world example — someone writing 'eggcorn' instead of 'acorn', because an acorn is indeed an egg-shaped seed or corn of the oak tree.

Coined by linguist Geoffrey Pullum in 2003 on the blog Language Log, where he and Mark Liberman discussed a new way to categorise this type of substitution error.

Distinguished from a malapropism by its internal logic — an eggcorn makes plausible phonetic and semantic sense, whereas a malapropism is simply the wrong word.

The Oxford English Dictionary added eggcorn to its records in 2011, with Merriam-Webster following in 2014, representing its full acceptance into standard lexicography.