What the Heck is a Malapropism?
© Barb Alexander
After changing classes one afternoon, my eighth grade students were getting settled in their seats and I was chatting with them.
"How has your day been, Tommy?" I asked one young man.
"Not bad," he replied. "We just learned about something new in health class, actually. I never heard of it before."
"Oh really? What was it?" I asked.
"We learned about girls who are anorexic and ballistic."
All I could picture was a very thin, angry woman! Tommy learned something else new that day, as I pointed out to him that he had just used a malapropism.
The term "malapropism" derives from the French "mal a propos" ("out of place"). A malapropism is the [usually] accidental use of a word which is similar to the one intended but which produces a different (and often contradictory) effect.
Malapropisms are named for Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Sheridan's late eighteenth-century play, "The Rivals". Mrs. Malaprop wants to fit in with her upper-class aquaintances, and thinks that big words are the way to go. Of course, the effects are hilarious when the big words backfire on her, as they sound very much like the word she intended, but their meaning is way off-the-mark
In Tommy's case, he meant to say "bulimic," a condition marked by gorging on massive quantities of food and then voiding it from the body immediately, to avoid weight gain. "Ballistic" sure sounds similar, but its meaning is not! According to Dictionary.com, something that is ballistic "relates to or is characteristic of the motion of objects moving under their own momentum and the force of gravity; ex:'ballistic missile'" In conversation, "ballistic" is slang for "furious"!
If you are a South Park fan, you may have caught a malapropism intended by the writers for comic effect in one episode: After having much trouble reading, the frustrated Officer Barbary exclaims, "Okay, okay -- I can't read! I'm illegitimate!" (Surely, birth out of wedlock doesn't doom you to a life of illiteracy!)
Imagine the possibilities if these near-twin terms were to be confused...
- Simulated and stimulated
- Odious and odorous
- Dissention and distention
- Enemy and enema
- Rolex and Rolodex
- Pinnacle and pineapple
- Decompress and decompose
- Script and scripture
- Assimilated and assassinated
- Confidence and competence
- Participation and precipitation
- Limbo and libido
The list goes on and on!
Heard a malapropism in action? Post it in a discussion for this article, or e-mail me so I can have a good laugh! It's been a quite a while since that South Park episode aired, after all.
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