Susie Dent on amusing malaphors
This month the Countdown lexicographer discusses the humour found in the unintentional mangling of two expressions or idioms.
Image credit: Michael Leckie
This month the Countdown lexicographer discusses the humour found in the unintentional mangling of two expressions or idioms.
For wisdom and a good chuckle I can always rely on Saga readers. Since I wrote about the subject of 'nominative determinism', your own examples have brightened many a cloudy day.
In case you missed it, nominative determinism involves individuals whose names seem spectacularly appropriate for their profession. Suffice to say my favourite by a country mile was the reader who shared that their window-cleaner is called Mr Bitt.
But this month I'd like to return to another favourite topic, the malaphor. Not the most enticing of titles, it's true, but a subject that (as some of you may remember) is a lot more fun than you might at first think.
The word itself is an ungainly mash-up of 'metaphor' and 'malapropism', and it essentially describes the unintentional mangling of two expressions or idioms. The result is often something that temporarily seduces the brain – but on closer inspection, makes little sense at all.
As always, the explanation is in the doing, so I'd like to add some recently encountered examples in the hope you might then share your own. I'll start with a favourite of my hairdresser, who regularly talks to me about her sleep deficit thanks to an excitable toddler.
More than once has she told me that, while reading her son a bedtime story, she herself was "out like a log". In her head, this makes perfect sense, though in reality she has managed to combine "out like a light" and "slept like a log" to create something that, though illogical, is entirely understandable.
It's the perfect example of a malaphor that might pass you by if you're not concentrating.
The word itself is an ungainly mash-up of 'metaphor' and 'malapropism'
Proverbs are a great source of such manglings. Do not, for example, ever put all your chickens in one basket. lf you do, presumably their eggs might hatch. especially if you're counting them.
And have you ever known someone so well that you can read them like the back of your hand? Or shruggingly declared that something is so easy because "it's not rocket surgery"?
Before everything goes to hell in a handbag, you might just as well announce it as a "walk in the cake".
Conversely, if circumstances that have seemed difficult finally start falling into place, you might sense that "the ducks are aligning"; inadvertently, of course, mixing up "ducks in a row" with the stars bestowing good fortune from above.
The wonderful thing about language is that, no matter what you're looking for. it will never stop providing us with new examples
Still, far better to get our ducks aligned than to stand by and let chaos ensue. We might then end up like "lemmings to the slaughter", a mix-up that will make sense to anyone who remembers one of the earliest self (and best) video games that involved tiny lemmings following each other blindly and falling off various obstacles unless you were able to stop them.
Thankfully, no lambs were involved in the making of that malaphor but if they were, rest assured the fan would most definitely hit the roof.
Sometimes, of course, we are all too stuck in our ways to change: you can't teach an old leopard new spots after all. But the wonderful thing about language is that, no matter what you're looking for. it will never stop providing us with new examples.
Many a malaphor can be picked up while out and about - the sport of eavesdropping has never been such fun. Of course, none of us is immune, and even the most seasoned linguist is prone to producing their own slips of the tongue.
And when they're caught out? Let's just say I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.
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