What's a 'Malapropism'? With examples

in #writing8 years ago

Is it too harsh to call people ‘Dumb-ass’ if they get these wrong?

Malapropisms seem to be rife these days. Is it because we communicate MORE by written text than we did twenty, thirty years ago?


Source

Please feel free to let me know in the replies.

WRONG

Could care less

Pacific

Colon

For all intensive purposes

Fall by the waste side

Irregardless

Escape goat

Peeked interest

Tender hooks

Should of

Nipped it in the butt

Beckon call

Case and point

Extract revenge

And today, I saw this – Oat cuisine

Another thing coming (as in, If you think that, you’ve got another thing coming)

RIGHT

Couldn’t care less

Specific

Cologne

For all intents and purposes

Fall by the wayside

Regardless

Scapegoat

Piqued interest

Tenterhooks

Should have

Nipped it in the bud

Beck and call

Case in point

Exact revenge

Haute cuisine

Another THINK coming

Sort:  

Also, "mute point" (for moot point)
Supposively

Seen on a top-of-trending steem post:

"prepper blogs used to teach you how to start a fire with potassium pomegranate" (instead of permaganate)

re: another think/thing... ive heard it both ways ,and i think its commonly accepted both ways, though the way youre not used to sounds silly.

just saw another one in an email thats always been one of my pet peeves.

"udderly" for "utterly"

Replying to both
I gloss over those articles these days. At one time, I would think about correcting the writer's errors, but who's got time for that?

right: A whole other
wrong: A whole nother

Sadly, irregardless has managed to worm its way into common usage/acceptance.

Oh yes, that's a whole nother can of worms (shudder!)

One I've seen in emails at work is 'Bare in mind'. Makes me smile

Isn't 'another thing coming' okay? As in, if you are expecting to get paid you have another thing coming.

Yes, I giggle at that too. Bare with me - or, let's get naked together!

This article defines the think/thing definition well - Think or Thing

The OED defines the phrase “to have another think coming”, a little flatly, as “to be greatly mistaken”. It only works in tandem with the phrase “if he thinks that ...” or similar. The earliest example the OED gives is from an American newspaper, the Syracuse Standard, in 1898:

“Conroy lives in Troy and thinks he is a coming fighter. This gentleman has another think coming.”

Well I've obviously had it wrong all my life. Not sure I've ever heard or read 'another think coming'. Interesting.

This blog series was good https://geekdad.com/tag/word-nerd/

Thank you, I'll study it further.

For all intensive purposes

lol when learning english I thought this was the correct one for years. :D

Should of

This one reminds me of British people? I think they use that a lot in spoken language.

Escape goat

hahaha

'Pacifically' is one that sets my teeth on edge most, I think.

I actually saw here on Steemit, in the title of a post, the verb "aspect" instead of "expect". Does it count as malapropism? or just plain simple typo?

I think that would be more than a typo. Unless the auto-correct facility took over, but you'd have to have pretty large thumbs to get 'a' and 'e' mixed.

These are hilarious!

Disturbingly so. The level of education is in free-fall - will we ever recover?

I'm sure we will eventually:)