Word of the Day:
malapropism
What It Means
The blundering use of an absurdly inappropriate word or expression in place of a similar-sounding one.
An instance of such use.
The translator matched every malapropism in the original with one from his own language.
Malapropism in Context
“That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was not yet closed. He had come thinking he could talk of it, even wanting to talk of his fettered condition, and—behold! he was shrinking away from this reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her Malapropisms.”
Did You Know?
From the name of Mrs. Malaprop, a character in the play The Rivals (1775) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan + -ism. As dramatic characters in English comic plays of this time often had allusive names, it is likely that Sheridan fashioned the name from malapropos (“inappropriate; inappropriately”), from French mal à propos. Mrs. Malaprop is a classic example of a familiar comedic character archetype who unintentionally substitutes inappropriate but like-sounding words that take on a ludicrous meaning when used incorrectly.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: malapropism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “malapropism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/malapropism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
