| Humor Fiction posted July 24, 2021 |
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OOOPS! Cause for amusement and mortification
Malaprops and Pocket Pool
by Elizabeth Emerald
The author has placed a warning on this post for language.
Google: mescaline salad
Did you mean: mesclun salad
No, I meant mescaline; I was curious to see if there are citations for this particular malaprop. I suspected the purported menu offering I'd heard tell of was apocryphal and found no evidence to the contrary.
Regardless of whether there are recorded instances of misspelling, the word mesclun is misspoken often enough to have an entry in kathleenwcurry.wordpress.com.
My interest was prompted by my continual amusement at my friend Chuck's idiosyncratic misusages.
A frequent Chuckism is the word rhubarb as used in place of brouhaha (which in itself is not the best word choice as he intends it). E.g., There was a rhubarb over which of the two would get the last piece of apple pie.
Here's another. When Chuck's daughter bought a house in the city of Saugus; he would say Sandra will be moving to Saugust in September. (To my amazement, Sandra, also referred to Saugust for the entire five years she lived there; I wonder if she misspelled it on her return address as well.)
Back in the early eighties. my manager, who was Korean, used to refer to a computing process as occurring "automagically." I'd always assumed the conflation of automatically and magically was due to his being a non-native speaker. It may indeed have been; he became testy when I would tease him.
If so, it was an independent coinage; Google just informed me automagically has been in use since the 1940s.
On one wince-worthy occasion, my ex-husband, in distress at the results of his home-done bowl-cut (statute has expired), stalked out and went to get his hair professionally shaped and styled.
He got tossed out of the shop by asking for a wash, cut, and bl*wj*b.
More recently, my friend Scott told me of his malaprop that led to a group guffaw.
In consideration of his elevated cholesterol, Scott asked the server at Dunkin Donuts whether their bran muffins contained "transgender" fats.
I'll wrap this up with a faux pas that involved ignorance of a slang expression, as opposed to word confusion.
Last month, Scott attended an educational seminar at his church. The flamboyant presenter, a visiting minister, with a slicked-back silver pompadour, and a pink-on-pinker-polka-dot bowtie, strutted around the sanctuary, hands in the pockets of his lavender trousers, whilst declaiming dramatically in purple prose.
At the break, as the audience milled about, Scott overheard a group of men remarking on the presenter's over-the-top performance.
One man wondered at the preacher's pretentious language.
Another commented on the self-important pacing.
A third man asked: What's up with the hands-in-pockets?
At which Scott approached. Loudly, in order that all could hear him, Scott said: Don't mind him, he's probably just playing pocket pool.
Google: mescaline salad
Did you mean: mesclun salad
No, I meant mescaline; I was curious to see if there are citations for this particular malaprop. I suspected the purported menu offering I'd heard tell of was apocryphal and found no evidence to the contrary.
Regardless of whether there are recorded instances of misspelling, the word mesclun is misspoken often enough to have an entry in kathleenwcurry.wordpress.com.
My interest was prompted by my continual amusement at my friend Chuck's idiosyncratic misusages.
A frequent Chuckism is the word rhubarb as used in place of brouhaha (which in itself is not the best word choice as he intends it). E.g., There was a rhubarb over which of the two would get the last piece of apple pie.
Here's another. When Chuck's daughter bought a house in the city of Saugus; he would say Sandra will be moving to Saugust in September. (To my amazement, Sandra, also referred to Saugust for the entire five years she lived there; I wonder if she misspelled it on her return address as well.)
Back in the early eighties. my manager, who was Korean, used to refer to a computing process as occurring "automagically." I'd always assumed the conflation of automatically and magically was due to his being a non-native speaker. It may indeed have been; he became testy when I would tease him.
If so, it was an independent coinage; Google just informed me automagically has been in use since the 1940s.
On one wince-worthy occasion, my ex-husband, in distress at the results of his home-done bowl-cut (statute has expired), stalked out and went to get his hair professionally shaped and styled.
He got tossed out of the shop by asking for a wash, cut, and bl*wj*b.
More recently, my friend Scott told me of his malaprop that led to a group guffaw.
In consideration of his elevated cholesterol, Scott asked the server at Dunkin Donuts whether their bran muffins contained "transgender" fats.
I'll wrap this up with a faux pas that involved ignorance of a slang expression, as opposed to word confusion.
Last month, Scott attended an educational seminar at his church. The flamboyant presenter, a visiting minister, with a slicked-back silver pompadour, and a pink-on-pinker-polka-dot bowtie, strutted around the sanctuary, hands in the pockets of his lavender trousers, whilst declaiming dramatically in purple prose.
At the break, as the audience milled about, Scott overheard a group of men remarking on the presenter's over-the-top performance.
One man wondered at the preacher's pretentious language.
Another commented on the self-important pacing.
A third man asked: What's up with the hands-in-pockets?
At which Scott approached. Loudly, in order that all could hear him, Scott said: Don't mind him, he's probably just playing pocket pool.
 Recognized |
Pocket pool: a vulgar term pertaining to a man fiddling with himself through his pockets.
© Copyright 2024. Elizabeth Emerald All rights reserved.
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