I was just playing my nightly live game show, HQ (which you should totally check out–and use my share code “nikkiebutt” when you download it so I get an extra life 😉 ), and one of the questions was about the origin of the world “malapropisms”. I couldn’t quite remember the high school English lesson when I must have learned about them, so I Googled it (after losing the game, btw). A malapropism is
the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase; especially : the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context
and some of them drive me absolutely crazy when people say them is day-to-day speech. I may not have remembered the meaning of malapropism off the top of my head, but I’m very familiar with people saying things like “could of” instead of “could have” or “for all intensive purposes”; those things are like nails on a chalkboard to me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always speak super-correctly, but I try my best to avoid blunders when possible. If you’re like me and are interested in improving your communication skills, you should read Grammarly’s 8 Embarrassing (Yet Common) Malapropisms and icas.com’s Are you saying that right?.
