Eggcorns & Malapropisms & Dogberryisms, Oh My!

Firstly dear readers, please forgive the poetic license I’ve exercised in the naming of this post.

Malapropisms and dogberryisms are of course one and the same thing. But I wanted a set of three so it sounded a bit like ‘Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh My!’… I heart the Wizard of Oz.

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know -they really don’t need a link from me, they’ve got tons of links already; but I feel mean when I don’t link):

Malapropisms / Dogberryisms

“The word malapropos is an adjective or adverb meaning “inappropriate” or “inappropriately”, derived from the Frenchphrase mal à propos (literally “ill-suited”).

The terms malapropism and the earlier variant malaprop come from Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals, and in particular the character Mrs. Malaprop. Sheridan presumably named his character Mrs. Malaprop, who frequently misspoke (to great comic effect), in joking reference to the word malapropos.

The alternative phrase “Dogberryism” comes from the Shakespearean play Much Ado About Nothing, in which the character Dogberry served the same purpose as Mrs. Malaprop for comedic effect.

An instance of mis-speech is called a malapropism when:

1. The word that is used means something different from the word the speaker or writer intended to use.
2. The word that is used sounds similar to the word that was apparently meant or intended. Using obtuse (wide or dull) instead of acute (narrow or sharp) is not a malapropism; using obtuse (stupid or slow-witted) when one means abstruse (esoteric or difficult to understand) would be.
3. The word that is used has a recognized meaning in the speaker’s or writer’s language.

Eggcorns

“In linguistics, an eggcorn is an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker’s dialect. Characteristic of the eggcorn is that the new phrase makes sense on some level (”old-timers’ disease” for “Alzheimer’s disease”). Eggcorns often involve replacing an unfamiliar, archaic, or obscure word with a more common or modern word.

The term “eggcorn” was coined by Geoffrey Pullum in September 2003, in response to an article by Mark Liberman on the website Language Log, a blog for linguists.Liberman discussed the case of a woman who substitutes the phrase egg corn for the word acorn, arguing that the precise phenomenon lacked a name; Pullum suggested using “eggcorn” itself.

So, back to the point.

I went to a comedy night tonight. It was brilliant.

Unhappily, the acts were somewhat upstaged.

I’m somewhat concerned that this might just be a location joke (i.e. you had to be there) but here goes:

So I’m chatting to this guy who is a friend of a friend - it was the first time I met him. He says:

“See the thing with me is, you either love me or hate me… What you see is what you get - I’m like - what do you call it? Wiggy Woo!”

Now clearly he meant wysiwyg (pronounced ‘wizzywig’).

See it’s still making me laugh now… And due to a stinking hangover courtesy of my work Christmas drinks on Thursday night I’ve been on the orange juice all night.

Being the geek that I am, I of course got home and started trying to figure out if there was a name for the linguistic gymnastics performed tonight.

I came to the conclusion that it’s kind of an eggcorn - wiggy woo sounds a little like wizzy wig… I don’t think it’s a malapropism / dogberryism - as I don’t think wiggy woo actually means anything.

There’s also a strong possibility that in fact there is no proper linguistic term for this type of thing, as it’s really nothing more than an error.

There’s an even stronger possibility that I’m in danger of disappearing up my own backside with this one… Despite having been out tonight, I’m guessing I *still* need to get out more… Or maybe stay out for longer…

Feel free to weigh in with your comments about linguistics and indeed my increasingly geeky tendencies below…