Malapropagation: Lead The Way and We’ll Precede

Her son bought her a new gadget (well knew to her at least) and Mrs. Smith was very proud of her ‘celluloid phone’.

At a work dinner, Mrs. Smith was heard to say that the dinner speaker had ‘waxed effluently’.

Mrs. Smith often said that her son, when growing up, often ‘cried fox’.

Whether Mrs. Smith was doing it to be funny or whether she had no idea just how often she uttered malapropisms, it definitely kept those who knew her amused.

We hear of a bizarre choice of words being used at a funeral recently. The man who died had lived a very moral life and had never got himself into trouble. Perhaps his wife knew better though after she was overheard saying that her husband was ‘down in heaven now’.

Feeling under the weather when the winter starts to hit is really no fun. Being in the doctor’s waiting room can be fun especially when you overhear someone mixing up their words. And so it was when a woman on her phone was overheard to say that her sexual demands were now at an end because her husband had become ‘impertinent’. Perhaps he really has become intrusive and rude but then again maybe not!

To think that was funny, it got better after another woman in the waiting room was overheard talking about her latest diet. A diet she had to go on because her weight tended to ‘flatulate’ from time to time.

Have you ever had the misfortune to utter a malapropism? I bet you have, it happens more than we like to admit. The best ones though is when one appears in a newspaper. Once it goes to print and is published, there is not much that can be done to save the embarrassment of the author. One of my favourites has to be from a report on a rugby match that appeared in the local paper. It was describing a match-winning try and explained that although the player was tackled by a full-back, his ‘impotence’ took him over the line.

Hope you have enjoyed reading about malapropisms and I hope that it raised a chuckle or two. Perhaps you have some favourites that you have overheard, they really are ‘worth there weight in salt’.