Eggcorns

"run ramshod" - simply, please define it or tell me where I can look up a definition. I've tried to look it up in word and phrase dictionaries everywhere for two days. Go ahead, Google it - it doesn't help much. But you will see that it appears in thousands of documents ... to include the US Government. I cannot find a definition of 'ramshod' or 'run ramshod' anywhere! Seems odd for such a commonly used phrase....

It's not commonly used. Google shows fewer than 500 instances of it, compared to 378,000 of "run roughshod," which is a real phrase. "Ramshod" is probably just a mis-hearing of roughshod. Now, what is "roughshod"? Go back one page, scan down the Forum page to a few days ago, and you'll find it.

And then there's assonance. Ramrod is a word heard more often in a figurative use than a literal one, but it is sufficiently well known for the distinction between rod and shod to become blurred. Roughrod, anyone?
SS

You may have been facetious, but by golly, if you Google "roughrod," you'll find 5 instances. Just to stretch it further, I tried "rodshod," and found 29 hits, many of them "ride rodshod" in nature. A non-lyric Mondegreen?

News from the "Huh? What?" front: There's a word for prose mondegreens. It's "eggcorns." ~rb

Good find! The Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Eggcorn is a good read, with great examples. We have had some of those eggcorns sent to us on this forum!