Welcome to the fifth posting dealing with serving effectively as Grammarian at a club meeting. Thus far we have considered incomplete sentences, mispronunciations, grammatical mistakes, and non sequiturs; let us turn our attention here in part V to malapropisms.
Dictionary.com defines malapropism as “An act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, especially by the confusion of words that are similar in sound.” Since I have heard Grammarians stumble over the proper pronunciation, here is that, also from Dictionary.com: mal–uh-prop-iz-uhm.
This would seem to be a difficult error to detect (and, as we will discuss shortly, to classify), not only because the proper word and the one uttered sound similar, but if the person is speaking at a normal or rapid pace, you might not quickly detect it. It is almost as if your brain has to, after the event has occurred, mentally play the sentence back to properly annotate your worksheet. Remember, you want to note the context, not just the event.
Here are two examples of malapropisms in the more-typical, unintentional use sense:
“Lead the way and we’ll precede.” Here, proceed would have been the proper word choice.
“Texas has a lot of electrical votes.” This one, attributed to Yogi Berra, should have used electoral, not electrical.
In the previous posting I wrote, “It should be noted that ‘non sequiturs in writing are used as a literary device.’1” The same can be said for malapropisms. How? The malapropism could be defined as the deliberate humorous misuse of a word by confusing it with a similar sounding word. Encountering this in written form is more likely than in oral form, but if the speaker is presenting a well-crafted humorous speech, who knows? I look at such inclusion as a creative challenge–do you?
A favorite source of mine for these is Archie Bunker in the television show All in the Family. Of course, the character was unintentionally using them, while we should credit–and thank!–the writers for some beauties:
- A pigment of your imagination.
- Groinecologist.
- “It’s a well-known fact that capital punishment is a detergent to crime!”
In closing, if you encounter a malapropism, determine how it was used. If unintentionally, log it as a grammatical error, but if intentionally, it should be considered creative language use.
Even if you never encounter a malapropism as Grammarian, consider embedding one of these literary gems in an upcoming speech!
1https://www.grammarly.com/blog/non-sequitur/