Eggcorn
Etymology
Coined by linguists on the blog Language Log around 2003, after a documented case of someone writing "egg corn" for "acorn." The label deliberately is itself an eggcorn, chosen because "egg corn" is a plausible-sounding reinterpretation of the original.
noun · /EG-korn/
A misheard word or phrase reshaped into a version that seems to make its own sense.
What it names
The errors that are secretly reasonable — "for all intensive purposes," "old-timers’ disease" — where the mistake reveals the speaker actively trying to make meaning.
Example
Writing "a mute point" for "a moot point" is a classic eggcorn — you can almost see the logic, since a silenced point would indeed be pointless.
Related idea
Unlike a malapropism, which substitutes a wrong word to comic and senseless effect, an eggcorn substitutes one that fits the meaning surprisingly well.
See also