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“malaprop”
A silly misuse or humorous presentation of words which have different meanings than those that are spoken: This link will show you many examples of malaprops, which came from a drama character's name.
An example of a malaprop was a cartoon in which a character says that a fully grown horse years ago was a little hoarse.
This entry is located in the following units:
Eponymous Words Directory
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mal-, male-, mali-
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malaprop (verb), malaprops; malaproped; malaproping
To utter an amusing error which occurs when someone uses a word that sounds like another word but which has a completely different meaning: Oliver's cousin habitually malaprops words which he doesn't intend to be wrong; however, people can't help but laugh when he misuses such comments.
Examples of words that the cousin malaproped: "I regret that my affluence (influence) over my son is very small."
"Sure, if I reprehend (apprehend) anything in this world it is the use of my oracular (vernacular) tongue, and a nice derangement (arrangement) of epitaphs! (epithets!)"
This entry is located in the following unit:
mal-, male-, mali-
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(Mrs. Malaprop and her Malapropisms)