{"id":2618,"date":"1998-03-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1998-03-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1998\/03\/29\/mmalaprop\/"},"modified":"2018-01-14T20:15:03","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T04:15:03","slug":"mmalaprop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1998\/03\/29\/mmalaprop\/","title":{"rendered":"mm: A Nice Derangement"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\r\n
\r\n

[Enter Virginia and Wesley.]<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: What's a malapropism?<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: It's when you accidentally replete a word with another word that sounds somewhat simian, often with comic effect.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: And polarity ensues.<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: Something like that. It's best when the replacement word is somehow revenant to the situation. It's named after Mrs. Malaprop, from Sheridan's The Rivals<\/cite>, who was always trying to sound acculturated, but always euphemized the wrong word.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: Is she one of the rivals? Let me guess, they have a context\u2014\"duelling malapropisms\"?<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: No, she's just the otiose old aunt of one of the main characters, Lydia Languish.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: So named, no doubt, for her mystery of the English languish.<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: Well, she's a big fan of Romans novels\u2014you know, the kind with the languishing heroin.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: You're saying she's a heroine addict?<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: I guess a bad book is kinda like a good neurotic\u2014it helps you sleep.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: So, back to this Malaprop character. From mal a propos<\/i>, yes? That means \"out of place.\" \u2014Pardon my French.<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: No habla Francois.<\/i> That means \"Hell if I know.\" Pardon my Spanish.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: What kinds of things does she say?<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: My favorite bit is where she explains, \"If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!\"<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: What other pearls of wisdom drop from her lips like lapinary gems?<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: There's the part where she says someone is \"[a]s headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.\" Hmm, headstrong\u2014kinda reminds me of someone else I know\u2014<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: What a croc. Besides, I may be headstrong, but I'm arm-strong, too\u2014want to arm-wrestle? I bet I can make you Neil.<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: Hey, calm down\u2014let's discuss this like rationed adulterers.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: Look out\u2014your Freudian slip is showing.<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: Ah, yes, paradox. I saw a paradoxies once who\u2014<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: You mean parapraxis<\/i>. It makes para-perfect, you know.<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: I read somewhere that Freud categorized language errors as either \"lapsus linguini,\" slips of the tongue, or \"lapsus calamari,\" slips of the pen. ...Hmm, I'm getting hungry all of a sudden.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: And then there's \"lapsus bovus,\" the common cowslip. There's many a slip 'twixt the tongue and the lip...<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: And \"lapsus pinko,\" the pink slip?<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: And \"lapsus negligee,\" the slip into something more comfortable.<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: I guess you could consider spellchecker errors to be a sort of computer equivalent of malapropisms, a kind of lapsus binarius.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: And finally, the lapsus canis, or lap dog. An example of which is the lapsus Sirius\u2014the opposite of the lapsus comicus.<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: A variable fuselage of paronomasia.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: A pun, by any other name, would smell as much. ...But enough of this airy persiflage. You mentioned seafood\u2014how about we continue this over dinner?<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: Okay, but you can't have any of mine. I'm feeling kinda shellfish.<\/p>\r\n

Virginia<\/b>: Let's go someplace by the beach. Maybe we can go to the boardwalk afterward. Isn't there a town with a boardwalk somewhere around here?<\/p>\r\n

Wesley<\/b>: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Cruz.<\/p>\r\n

[Exit Wesley, pursued by Virginia.]<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-llowercase-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3339,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions\/3339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}