Verbal typos: The Malapropism
Reading the "worst typos ever" blogs has left me laughing . . . and free associating.
I'm now starting to come up with a close cousin to typos. The verbal typo.
The malapropism.
If memory serves me right, the term is based on a character from Molière, one Mrs. Malaprop. Instead of the mot juste, an expression that was completely à propos, she did the opposite. She came out with crazy errors and slips of the tongue that in some magical way communicated the reality of what she meant. Or its opposite.
There are a few I've started to hear with enough regularity that I'm wondering if they are starting to creep into standard usage. (Perish the thought!) But they do have a certain ring to them.
Here are a few:
Mute Point (instead of "moot point")
Escape Goat (instead of "scapegoat")
. . . and my personal favorite:
Obeast (I think that's how it would be spelled.)
As in: "A year after I quit Weight Watchers, I'd become really obeast."
Any others?
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Well Joey on "Friends"
Well Joey on "Friends" called it a "moo point"...because of a cow, and it just didn't matter what a cow thought! There are others of course.
Several years prior to the Olive books coming out, I made a Christmas card with a moose-like reindeer on the front that said, "Season's Greetings from Olive....
inside it said, (you know, Olive, the other reindeer) and all of us, Michael, Mark, and Nancy
I made a duplicate that we gave away at the store I worked in with the store's name inside. I actually made sweatshirts of Olive for my sons and me, and then my mother and sisters, and then my whole store that we wore throughout the holiday season. Is it a malapropism? Or just a play on words?
Great story! Reminds me of
Great story! Reminds me of the book about misheard rock lyrics. I don't know what those are called but they sure are funny!
There's a bathroom on the right
I think they are called mondegrins, or something like that. My wife, for years thought that, in the Creedance Clearwater song "Bad moon rising" he was singing 'there's a bathroom on the right' where the line should be 'there's a bad moon on the rise' It is such a widespread misconception that he actually sang that line while pointing stage right when we finally saw him live. It made her feel like she had a lot of company.
Spoonerisms...
...are always fun. Any Northern Californian's favorite should be the story of how Calistoga supposedly got its name. Quoth Wikipedia:
"Local folklore holds that the town supposedly got its name from a Spoonerism uttered by (notorious early Californian) Sam Brannan. He is alleged to have said (perhaps after sampling the local vintages) that the location would become the 'Calistoga of Sarifornia'. He had meant to say the 'Saratoga of California', comparing it to the famous hot springs of that New York town."
Huntington Sharp, Editor, Red Room
Spooner
As a former resident of Calistoga, I'm well aware of that story. There are those that say it's not so, but I choose to believe it because I never think anything as mundane as the truth should be allowed to interfere with a good story.
A guy I worked with had read a great deal about the actual Spooner, who was a professor at someplace like Harvard, and tended to turn words around when he was vexed. The story goes he got so angry at his class's performance in a term final, that he thundered "Gentlemen, you have tasted your worm!"
I stand corrected!
A friend from my writing group (a former English professor, so she should know!) tells me that Mrs. Malaprop is actually a character from Sheridan's The Rivals. I think there is another character from Molière, who is similar, perhaps often linked with her.
Interesting
I would have thought that it had something to do with appropriatness, if that's actually a word. So now we have two terms that are named after people or characters. I wonder where Mondregrin came from, and if I'm even coming close to spelling it right. Maybe Count Mondegrin or something was always hearing things wrong?