Malapropism



A while ago I treated myself to a ticket to see the Irish comic Dara Ò Briain . He is performing at the Storyhouse in Chester tonight .
I told my sister that I was going to see him and the news was met with certain level of mild incredulity
This surprised me as I thought my street cred  would have gone up a notch in my sister's eyes given the fact old Dara was a stalwart of Mock The Week and other such comedy shows
"I would have thought she wasn't quite your cup of tea" my sister commented as we drove out of Chester and then the penny dropped
"Who do you think I'm going to watch again?" I asked her
"Dora Bryan"  came the response

Now this mixing up of words and names runs in our family
My grandmother was famous for stating that she was  nearly killed by a falling Insanitary bomb during the war ( instead of an Incendiary bomb)
I once worked with a ward sister who told me off for rushing a dressing with the words
"Patience is a virgin"

Malapropisms anyone?

114 comments:

  1. My mother once called her work colleague vagina instead of Regina. This was in a group of people too.

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  2. My late mother called her tinnitus, 'titinus', but I expect she couldn't hear the word correctly due to the condition.

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  3. As I am nearly deaf, it happens all the time. I answer the wrong question or get names complete wrong. Al-anon meetings are the worst. “Hello I’m johann”. Me; hey john. “Hello I’m aurora”. Me: hey laure. Ah well....

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  4. My ex-mother in law couldn't pronounce 'h's' so we had quman beans (human beings) and her brother, Hugh, was known to all as 'Q'.
    I recently told Partner that he'd committed purgatory instead of perjury (long story that I don't want to put here for fairly obvious reasons).

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  5. When we lived in the Canary Islands my father in law always called the autopista (motorway) the autopizza

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  6. Anonymous11:18 am

    I love the Kenneth Williams story and often tell it.
    At a book signing of his autobiography the queue was very long, a lady sidled up to his table and he signed a copy ' to Emma Chissit fondest wishes Kenny Williams ', telling her 'many thanks, £9.99 please pay at the till'.
    'Ere wos this' the woman said
    What you asked for replied dear Kenneth
    I said 'ow much is it?' Not this rubbish wot you wrote 'she said flouncing off.
    Love that story, never been anyone to remotely replace him
    My husband once shouted at him from a van in the West End of London, ' my wife loves you.' Williams replied 'piss 'awf'
    Still loved him though
    Tess xx

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  7. Hilda Ogden was well known for them in "Coronation Street". She called her living room mural a "muriel" and once referred to her husband Stan as looking like a "punk rocket".

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  8. Turn left at the three halos (windmills); nip it in the butt (bud); daffobils (daffodils). All from an old friend, since departed. There are many more but it is too early in the morning to remember.

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  9. Years ago my mum rang to tell me Mike Spilligan had died.
    I once described a clock as having 'Numan Rominals' instead of Roman Numerals.

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  10. My favorite is from long ago when my young daughter pointed out a large praying mantis clinging to a window screen, saying, "Look at the praying Baptist." Hope you're feeling better.

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    1. I've had lemisip and sleep, I'm better x

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  11. workmate 'to all intensive purposes' ('to all intents and purposes')

    Another workmate 'he's on that new site called Linke-din' ('LinkedIn')

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    1. The first one I've heard a few times

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  12. My elderly client told me she had ten children before she had a restorectomy {hysterectomy}.

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  13. My car broke down going up a hill, I was going to work and other cars kept tooting at me, as if I would break down there if I could chose. Anyway a scruffy old pick up passed me and stopped and he pushed me so that I could get the car onto a small road out of the way. I went home and picked up my husbands car, later on at work I told a visiting chiropodist about my morning. I said that there were still " Shites in Nining Armour in this world. As she fell about laughing I realised what I had said. !!!!! Love Andie xxx

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  14. My Nan was the Queen of the Malaprop. She often said that an injury would be better off for a good 'crap bandage' :D

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    1. School boy humour, pancake day asking for craps

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  15. Dora Bryan was a really lovely woman who I last saw, strangely enough, playing Mrs Malaprop.

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    1. She was indeed a darling - died in next-door-to-here Brighton four years ago, and long supportive of the AIDS Hospice there. Saw her just the once, in 'Charlie Girl' in the 80s (along with Paul Nicholas, Cyd Charisse......and Nicholas Parsons).

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    2. Something in common boys

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  16. Friend to our grade 8 pious parochial schoolteacher: "Mr. Lober, when does the sair fart?" 'fair start' He managed a very small smile.

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  17. When caring for a confused demented patient, he asked What town he was in. He was in Cape May Court House, I told him. He got a big smile on his face as he proclaimed, wow, Cape May Whore House!

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  18. No.. my husband's family is more mispronunciation of word that drives me crazy...lol chimney becomes chimley and salmon is pronounced with the 'l' ... and i noticed that the family all pronounces it this way because thats the way my mother in law said it.. So don't think your kids aren't listening to you because they are.. lol Hugs! deb

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    1. My ex-husband used to say both these ... chimley and sallmon. He also couldn't say spaghetti, it was always psgetti He told me that's how everyone in Salford said them 😀 My spellcheck hates me now!!

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    2. I cannot say the pudding tiramisu

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  19. Anonymous1:23 pm

    My husband blames his near misses on his dyslexia:

    US Supreme Court Justice Soto Mayor - or Santa Manure

    SUV Ford Excursion - or Exhibitionist

    Boat named Galatea - or Genetalia

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  20. Barbara Anne2:30 pm

    A patient who had spinal meningitis was heard telling a friend that she had "smiling mighty Jesus"!

    Hope you're on the mend.

    Hugs!

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  21. These are all so good! My late father once asked if I'd seen the movie The Colored People. Now The Color Purple is one of my favorites, I own the dvd, but I still use his version of the title.

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    1. Well, that movie pushed all kinds of buttons in my family. My aunt hasn't seen that movie to this day. We relate to too many people in it. She says she lived it so she doesn't need to pay to see it. Adolph Caesar was her father to a tee!

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    2. The reunion moment leaves me so wrung out

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  22. A falling insanitary bomb definitely does NOT sound good.

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    1. I've been covered in worse like I said

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  23. Let us know how it went. :)

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  24. My Mum is full of what we refer to as Nellie Pledge'isms. Never a visit goes by without a new one appearing ... when the little hand falls off her watch I will know she has made the final transition. 'I can say that without fear of contraception!' 😃

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    1. Wasn't Nellie pledge a character played by Hilda baker?

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    2. She was indeed ... gosh we're showing our age that we even know this!! The best Pledgerisms come from Nearest and Dearest, a sitcom in which the family owned a Pickle Factory 😀

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  25. My grandmother once told my mother about a friend who had bought a condom (condominium) in Florida.

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  26. This post made me laugh and reminded me of my Nan who apparently wore a 'Brazier'. It must have made her so hot!
    Briony
    x

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    1. Yes it was a good idea, very entertaining

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  27. Not exactly a malapropism bur my mother's neighbour always got her words mixed up. The one that we adopted and used for ever after was when she came home from town and had to stand because the bus was so full.
    She complained to my mother that there was a 'bull fuss'.

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    1. I always said par cark instead of car park as a child

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  28. I told a friend about an interesting interview I'd heard with actor Tom Conti in which he said his Italian father met his Scottish mother when he was interred during the Second World War ....of course I should have said Interned !

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  29. We live in an area that often has tornados in the spring and summer. When my son was a toddler he heard a tornado warning and came running in saying "the tomatoes are coming, the tomatoes are coming!". This was even funnier because we had recently seem a bad sci-fi movie called "The Attack of the Giant Tomatoes"!

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  30. My 90 year old aunt, who died a couple of years ago developed bowel cancer. The matron at the hospice was called Pollyanna. My Aunty insisted on calling her polyester.......
    She also called dementia, dimension.

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  31. Really enjoying these. Many years ago when an elderly family friend was discussing politics she called Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, "Goldy Manure."

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    1. I forgot to add, the friend was a fan of Meir!

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    2. Now this had me tittering
      Goldy manure the famous Indian drag queen

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  32. At a chinese restaurant our 9 year old daughter exclaimed ‘look at all the testicles’ when the dish with squid was set before her.
    A friend, who had a swimming pool, said that when she died her husband would put her ashes in the pool and she would float around in perpetual
    devotion (perpetual motion).

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    1. Perpetual devotion sounds better eh?

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  33. My daughter, when she was 7 years old, received an award at school. She called me at work all excited to say she won an award for epidemic excellence. Should have been academic but I didn't have the heart to correct her just then.

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  34. Haha! Dara O Briain ist brilliant.

    My Mother thought the American comic Rosie O'Donnell was very funny. She once told me, 'I just love Rosie McDonald!'

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  35. Anonymous7:06 pm

    My partner's Mother announced that she was going to have her lounge repainted with the shade Mongolian and when it was finished that she wanted to have a large vase of Pompous Grass in the corner.
    Paul

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  36. Funnily enough it was Lady Mondegreen's blog that led me here so many years ago!
    I have a young friend who does drag as a 63 year old lady from a small town, called Pamela Hancock. He's SO clever and she gets her words wrong all the time. My favourite though is something that is common for women of her age and older who don't like to swear. In Maori, Wh is pronounsed F and she says WHAKatane.

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    1. Thank you for following for so long x

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  37. My dear Nan had many including T-Tops (T-shirts), Lolly ice (Ice lolly), Auntie Ficial, (artificial),but my favourite was her insistence on calling my husband Greg. He's Craig x

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  38. It would have been long ago in high school when the star football player had his turn reading poetry...."she held him close to her bazzum!"

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  39. A favourite song at Christmas with my choir is 'O Holy Night'. It begins with the words 'O, Holy Night, the stars were brightly shining ...' except that someone loudly sang 'Shining brightly' instead. You can guess what this sounded like ...

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  40. A coworker once published a booklet that went to hundreds and hundreds of folks, inside and outside the company, with a typo "Pubic Affairs Department" instead of "Public Affairs Department".

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    1. I wrote orgasm in my biology a level paper instead of organism

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  41. My sister always called Alsatian dogs Salvation dogs. As they are often service dogs I think appropriate.

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  42. My mother (an English teacher for almost forty years) pronounces Alzheimer's as "Old timer's" and all the correcting in the world will not convince her that she's got it wrong :)

    And in turn, I embarrass my adult children by calling "espresso" "expresso" every. single. time. I don't (can't) drink the darn things, so I get very little chance to practice it.

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  43. P. S. How do you come up with these posts, John? They are priceless. I've so enjoyed the post and comments today!

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    1. Yes I loved today's post too

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    2. My aunt always said "Old Timer's Disease" too, and she always wished us "Happy Valentime's Day" in spite of being hard-core Catholic and admiring St. Valentine.

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  44. Since reading this earlier this morning I have just read our local paper and see that in a bid to reduce the road toll over Easter the police will be handing out Easter eggs, lollipops and pens to drivers stopped at checkpoints who are COMPILING with the road rules.

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  45. My Mum once going past the spa in Bridlington advertising Kareoke starts at 8pm. I don't like that West Indian music she said.

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    1. My grandmother sat through 3/4 of The Towering Inferno one Christmas and said " I hate war films"

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  46. My mum is convinced it's prostrate cancer.

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  47. Not quite a malapropism, but at a parent/teacher association meeting, my mother was upset at how much the sports budget was growing at the expense of other programs, and announced that she was not raising her children to be athletic supporters.

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  48. My Filipino doctor diagnosed me with a hiatal hernia when I was a youngster (well, 23 WAS a long time ago). My Mom and I spent hours trying to find out what a 'hitey hurtie' was.

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  49. My late Mother in Law was Swedish, so the occasions for mirth were constant. We still use some of her better ones between us. I can't actually think of any at the moment.

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  50. An 80 year old patient once told me that she was having an operation the next morning, and that "she was having an episiotomy for the pain". Methinks she meant an epidural.

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  51. I once told my colleagues that I had chlamydia running up my trellis. Later on I remembered that it was a clematis.

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    1. Reminds me of the time a crazy old broad (long gone) called Laura burst into the pub and announced: "Sorry I'm late - I've been admiring Gail's gorgeous clitoris - it's enormous!"

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  52. The malapropism "accidents speak louder than words" has been used by several people, including Annie Lennox.

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  53. Continuing the nursing theme: When I was a kid we had a neighbor (her name was Mitzi) who told my mother she was going in for surgery for her “very close” veins.

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    1. The college I attended had a medical school that specialized in training doctors for work in rural Appalachia. Several of my college friends got their MDs there. Before one of their practicums, they were given a collection of medical terms people in Appalachia tended to mutilate that they showed me. The one that has always stuck with me was spinal meningitis being warped into "Spinning Mighty Jesus."

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  54. Clever favorite- Tony Soprano said one of his fellows was in ‘a stagmire.’
    Personal favorite- my grandma called my car an ‘oy tota.’

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  55. My niece went to the zoo once when she was about four, and came home to tell us she had seen the histappotomus

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  56. One of our friends announced to the pub that he had seen a pelican falcon flying nearby.

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