Bad Malaprops

The humor is bad, but I approve of Mr. Thaves calling them malaprops instead of “malapropisms.”

…but he put “only” in the correct place, (next-to-last panel). But he should have said “The deck had” instead of “there were.”

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Sandhi is a Sanskrit word meaning “a putting together.” We get our word (ice cream) “sundae” from “sandhi.” Technically, the word refers to the effect that the end of one word has on the beginning of the next. This happens all the time in Sanskrit, I’m told, and sometimes in spoken English. (I suppose the choice of whether to use “a” or “an” before a word could be attributed to sandhi.)

Anyway, here’s a good example of using sandhi to make a joke.

You do know the scout motto, right?

Idioms are phrases in a language not meant to be taken literally. When we don’t understand something, we might say “It’s Greek to me,” whereas in Germany you’d say (in German) “It’s a Bohemian village to me.”

Here are some idioms whose meanings depend on context:

What are your favorite idioms? Feel free to put some in the comments.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

If you can, avoid using “make,” “do,” and any form of “to be” in your writing. Those verbs are ambiguous, and ambiguity is the enemy of good writing. Except in poetry and lies.

Here’s an example with “make.”

I admit, the choices aren’t graceful.

• Manufacture them fast enough
• Engineer them to go fast enough

But what matters is that you not be ambiguous!

A malaprop is when you have the meaning right but the pronunciation wrong. I don’t think a malaprop requires the mispronunciation to be an actual word. (In which case I know a member of my local home government who makes a lot of malaprops. But I digress.)

Anyway, the toaster gives the guy his revenge…

Wouldn’t you know it; I ran into a comic about malaprops!

Quiz: Can you tell what the correct words are? I counted six malaprops…