Published on 12, July, 2020
I love malapropisms: similar-sounding but incorrect words, which sometimes have a humorous effect.
Here are a couple of recent ones:
Have you seen any funny word stuff? If so, do share!
Wonderful idea, Sunflower; I love all forms of word play, especially the unintended ones. My favourite are "crash blossoms", where signs and news headlines shorten things in strangely ambiguous ways that conjure up surreal images. For example (taken from this webpage)...
Martian Tom
Your Shakespeare parody is amazing! In my book, there is no such thing as a bad pun - the worse, the funnier, I usually find!
I absolutely love those Trogluddite. I think this is my favourite thread. I wonder if a lot of the examples on here are so funny because they conjure up funny pictures. Visual thinking playing a part?
Why are they called crash blossoms i wonder
"Crash Blossoms" comes from the headline "Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms". The journalist writing about it realised that the phenomenon didn't have a name, and thought that "crash blossoms" seemed quite fitting.
Some of the other kinds of word errors got their names in a similar way. For example, misheard song lyrics are known as "Mondegreens" after someone who misheard "Laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen". And other misheard words are known as "egg-corns" if they're poetically apt; a mishearing of "acorns", which, like an egg, something grows from.