Tag Archives: humor

5 verbal pratfalls: fun with mondegreens, eggcorns, malapropisms, spoonerisms, and Freudian slips

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My dad once gave me a huge eraser with “I never make misteaks” printed on it. We all make misteaks mistakes, don’t we? Mistakes with language provide great entertainment for word lovers. People make so many mistakes in speaking that we can divide them into at least five different categories. If you search the internet for examples, you will not find necessarily find the same errors in the same categories all the time. It probably doesn’t matter what we call them. Enjoy!

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Beware of idol hands and other misused pears

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A Facebook post warned, “where there are idol hands, the devil must be at work.” According to any monotheistic religion, any part of an idol is bad news, not just the hands. But I suspect the poster was trying to paraphrase the common maxim, “the idle brain is the devil’s workshop.” As it turns out, I have long collected similar instances of idle hands—or maybe idle brains—making mistakes with homonyms on a keyboard. When faced with a pear pair of similar words, they choose the wrong one.

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Getting a bad wrap and other misused pears

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It’s time for some more fun with homonyms. English has many pairs of words with different spellings, different meanings, but the same pronunciation. For example, I came across a comment on regifting. The writer said the practice had a bad wrap. Now, if you order ingredients rolled in a tortilla and they’re stale or otherwise no good, you have gotten a bad wrap. Or if you have a piece of clothing called a wrap and it’s torn or stained, that’s a bad wrap. What does that have to do with regifting? On the other hand, a criminal has a rap sheet. If some of the charges are somehow phony, then he has a bad rap, or maybe a bum rap. In any case, he has a bad reputation, so you might see the phrase “bad rep.” Either of those phrases might describe a socially questionable practice. Whoever writes “bad wrap” in that context deserves a bad rep as a writer. And it’s not a bad rap.

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7 expressions about bad behavior: phrase origins

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Everyone does things that will get them in trouble, or ought to. Some people make a lifestyle of it. So languages have plenty of idioms to describe various kinds of misbehavior. Idioms are phrases that mean something other than the literal meaning of the words. Once, they had a literal meaning. But now, either we have forgotten the literal meaning, or the phrase has taken on a life of its own. Looking at the origins of these phrases might help us understand what they mean. Or, if we already do, we can have fun learning about it.

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10 archaisms: English words hardly anyone uses anymore

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Think of archaisms (or archaic words) in English as forgotten friends. Language has its fashions. Generations of people use a word, and then for some reason, everyone stops. You can find some of them in a dictionary. They will likely be labeled “archaic” or “obsolete.” You’d have to look in an unabridged dictionary, or even the OED to find others. We’ll run across archaisms sometimes when we read older works. That’s why it’s important to know what they mean. And it would be nice if we could start using some of them again. In any case, enjoy.

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