Malapropism – IOTW Report

Malapropism

Wednesday, 26 September 2018, 3:04 BFH Uncategorized 56

My mother is the queen of malapropism and mangled idioms, famously saying, “he’s so cheap he squeaks.”

This makes ZERO sense. The saying she’s struggling for is “he’s so tight he squeaks.” But, it makes for great entertainment… at times. I have to confess to not being in the mood for stupidity lately, the left is really working my nerves.

At cards, the people I play with insist on saying “mixed deal,” instead of misdeal. I have no idea how this started, and there seems to be no hope in ending it. No matter how many times it’s corrected it doesn’t stick.

I should have nipped it in the butt when I could have. Maybe they would have towed the line. But, it’s a tough road to hoe. For all intensive purposes, it’s a doggy dog world out there, and all these entertaining malapropisms are a blessing in the skies. I should just chill.

You know what else is entertaining? Flamingo dancing.

And you know what is amazing? Norm Crosby is supposively still alive.

Listening to him really boosts my self of steam.

I think I’ll copywrite this post.

56 Comments on Malapropism

  5. There’s another I used to hear all the time but couldn’t remember. When looking it up I came across “mondegreen” – misheard song lyrics. Never heard that before but I bet everyone’s got one (at least)!

    5

  7. @Lisl — Funny, I thought of the same word, “mondegreen.” I remember it from “Lady Mondegreen.” It was referenced in the book, “The Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed” (1984), and refers to a misread poem containing the line “Laid him on the green.” I received a copy of that book when it came out. It also contained, “And to the republic for Richard Stands.”

    10

  20. @riverlife_callie: Once I was having an disagreement with the stupidest supervisor I ever had in my entire working career and when he finally ran out of arguments he just said, “Well, that’s a mute point”. I replied, You’re right – there’s no point in talking about it anymore”.

    12

  30. True story. Embarrassing but true.
    When I first started college I was of the mindset of “why use a 2 syllable word when a 4 syllable word makes you sound smarter?”

    We were at the drive in movie just outside of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center when a huge explosion and fireball occurred behind us. It turns out that it was a mid air collision between two aircraft.

    Later, when recounting the story to my father-in-law he asked if anyone was killed.

    No. Fortunately both pilots EJACULATED in time. His brow furrowed and I then realized what I had said. He didn’t much like me before that and that certainly didn’t help.

    9

  31. Not a malapropism, but mispronunciantion of words. I’m going to tell on myself here. I’m an avid reader, and in my younger days I ran across words that I read but had not heard. Case in point: banal. I was talking to my husband and pronouned it BAY-nal. He laughed me out of the room. He also got me on mesquite. I said MESS-quite. He, the California native, informed me it was mes-QUITE.

    One that makes me grit my teeth is those that pronounce Nevada as Nev-AH-da. The state tourism board actually had a promotion to attempt to school people on how to pronounce it, to no avail,

    4

  33. @PHenry – I was in a business meeting when a very pretty young sales rep used ejaculated instead of evaluated. Dead silence…then a very red-faced young woman just continued talking – very fast.

    4

  34. I work for a 32 year old “boss”, daughter of the owner, and she can’t get any saying right. She likes to say, “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” and
    “we are really treading thin ice right now.”
    By the way, my favorite saying now is, “remember the X in espresso and especially is silent.” I have my grandkids telling people that now.

    6

  42. *Is it “butt naked” or “buck naked”?
    (My DH is hard of hearing and repeats some great mondegreens, usually sexually suggestive.)
    *Thunderstorms produce thunder and “lightening”.
    * Rainy weather aggravates my Arthuritis.
    * Ecksetera, for etcetera.

    Espresso is Italian, expresso is French.

    4

  43. I’m a manager in a public works division and I cringe at monthly meetings where at some point the director will invariably say, “Oh well, we’ll flush it all out later.” At first I thought it was a PW wastewater joke until I realized he never heard of fleshing out a plan. My secretary insists on “pacifically” instead of “specifically.”

    4

  47. @Thirdtwin (at 10:11 am): Dang – I thought I was the only person in the world that mispronounced “misled” like that when I was a kid. Makes me feel a little better about it now.

    🙂

    5

  49. @riverlife_callie – My OED entry for “banal” gives the buh-NALL pronunciation first, then BAY-null. In other words, both ways are perfectly acceptable.

    As for “Nevada” – it’s always been my habit to pronounce foreign words as reasonably close as possible to the language they come from using normal (American) English sounds. Nevada is Spanish for “snowy” or “snow-covered” and in that language is pronounced neh-VAH-dah.

    My main point is that an awful lot of words have multiple CORRECT or ACCEPTABLE pronunciations, but a lot of those come from widespread mispronunciations that through pure ignorant usage become accepted. A good example is “pejorative”. Until recently, that word was correctly pronounced PEE-jur-AY-tiv, quite different from today’s peh-JORE-u-tiv.

    2

Comments are closed.

iOTWreport.com ©2024 ----- iOTWreport is not responsible for the content of comments. All opinions in comments are solely the commenter's.