Chucklesome clucks
Minced Metaphors
It’s time to lighten the mood with mangled metaphors, idioms, and other valiant-but-failed attempts at figurative language. Having said that, the results are inadvertent yet successful attempts at levity, jocularity, and generally increased levels of dopamine.
I destroy and recombine perfectly serviceable metaphors, idioms, and other innocents on a regular basis. Because I collect others’ with glee, I know I’m not alone.
I’ve heard them called malaphors and malaprops, but I strongly disagree with using malaprop as any part of a description; first, because the term is ill-applied in an ironic twist (malaprops are intentional attempts to sound grand); and second, because mal itself, meaning “bad” is simply untrue—fun with words cannot be bad!
I’d go for something like risiphor or ridiphor, using the Latin risus, past participle of ridere "to laugh," meaning "laughable, capable of exciting laughter, comical" + pherein "to carry, bear" (from PIE root *bher- (1) "to carry," also "to bear children"). The result? “bearing laughter offspring.” Perfect!
As a bonus, who could resist saying, “That is patently risiphorous!” or “Another great ridiphor, Max!”
Although it bothers some who actually get these expressions right, the endless combinations that the rest of us come up with deserve a wide-girthed mirth berth.
And, even though these might technically appear to be…well…mistakes, I think they show a lack of rigidity at worst, and a creative brilliance at best. In fact, an utterance combining more than two original elements is golden in my book. As my daughter used to say when she was but a wee sass, “Mom, that tickles my timbers!”
Happily, it’s genetic.
Don’t quail at these meaty bird yolks before you hatch some tender clucks from this daybreak-broiled eggery of scrambled squawks!
You can't make an omelette without breaking stride.
Don't get all your eggs out of two bushes.
The tide has come home to roost.
That hen won't hunt.
There's some wiggle room for ruffled feathers.
Thank you for scratching your funny bone at the Verbihund Café!
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I’m shaking all my virtual feathers in your message filled with well-picked fluff❣️ snuff? Nope. Just love them.
I'm going with "There's some wiggle room for ruffled feathers." As the old song goes, "Shake a tail feather!"