Peter Rhodes: The eggcorn. Is it a moo point?

I RAISED the question a few days ago, how many of today's 21-year-old graduates could pass the 11-plus? A reader obligingly digs out an 11-plus maths paper from the 1950s with the question: "Subtract two-thirds of 834 from 23 times 185". Moving swiftly on...

SALLY Davies, the Chief Medical Officer who stands accused of a "nanny state" approach to alcohol says: "Do as I do when a reach for my glass of wine. Think, do I want the glass of wine or do I want to raise my own risk of breast cancer?"Is that good medical advice? It sounds more like paranoia.

I WROTE a few days ago about how I thought the label "sundries" in an old wardrobe referred to clothes that could be dried in the sun. A reader admits he assumed until well into his teens that a "white wedding" was one with snow on the ground. Which reminds me that until I was about seven, I believed that cats were female dogs. Any embarrassing childhood beliefs you'd care to share?

OUR changing language. One online debate about EU membership includes the view that "there is a seed change in opinion." This is known as an eggcorn. The word was invented by a linguistics professor in 2003 to describe a phrase that results from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another phrase, in this case the term "sea change."

THERE's a classic eggcorn in the comedy series Friends when Joey, who has obviously misheard the term "a moot point," tells Rachel that unless the boy she fancies also fancies her, then further discussion "is all a moo point." When Rachel questions the term, Joey explains: "Yeah, it's like a cow's opinion. It just doesn't matter. It's moo."

THE problem, in this digital age, is that an eggcorn, no matter how daft, can quickly pass into usage. Already one online dictionary, with Joey-like conviction, solemnly defines "seed change" as a big change, originating from medieval farming methods. Does this sort of thing enrich or diminish the English language? Frankly it's a moo point.

ANYONE surprised at the news that some of Britain's biggest companies, including Sainsbury's, Travis Perkins and the Football Association, have shared £5 million of taxpayers' money in order to install energy-saving bulbs? Me neither. In the same way, those big, flashy electric 4x4 vehicles, eagerly snapped up by the wealthy, are subsidised by taxpayers. As always, it's the rich wot gets the pleasure and the poor wot gets the blame.

THE latest case of Zika in Texas appears to have been spread by sexual contact. So that's an incurable, sexually transmitted disease which damages the brains of babies. How fitting that it begins with Z. If you made a list a doomsday diseases capable of wiping out humanity, this one would be, quite literally, the last word.

THIS time last week, lest we forget, Terry Wogan was one of the "silver stars" being lined up by the BBC for its much-ridiculed plan to persuade the over-75s to pay for their TV licences. Last Friday, Wogan was in the firing line. By Sunday, a saint.