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SILLY SIGNS. . . . .LET'S START A THREAD ?


Phil Perry

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7 hours ago, red750 said:

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Yet another example of humour in the English language - the malapropism.

 

The word "malapropism" (and its earlier variant "malaprop") comes from a character named "Mrs. Malaprop" in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals. Mrs. Malaprop frequently misspeaks (to comic effect) by using words which do not have the meaning that she intends but which sound similar to words that do. Sheridan presumably chose her name in humorous reference to the word malapropos, an adjective or adverb meaning "inappropriate" or "inappropriately", derived from the French phrase mal à propos (literally "poorly placed"). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of "malapropos" in English is from 1630, and the first person known to have used the word "malaprop" in the sense of "a speech error" is Lord Byron in 1814.

 

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott once claimed that no one "is the suppository of all wisdom" (i.e., repository or depository), but he was an arsehole.

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I have used malapropisms in the past when writing notices backstage in the theatre. A correctly worded notice gets read and forgotten. Using the wrong, but similar word seems to lead to people complying with what I was after.

I was lucky I never had to go into home insulation during the covid pandemic.

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