Fail to the chief

Minced Metaphors

Nov 08, 2024

a podium with an american flag and the white house — Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash

We’ve made it to the end of the week, so it’s time to lighten the mood with muddled metaphors, idioms, and other valiant-but-failed attempts at figurative language. 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 avidly 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 is never 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, Quinn!”

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, a risiphor combining more than two original elements is golden in my book.

So, I say we enjoy these twisted treasures for all they’re cracked up to be. As my daughter used to say when she was but a wee sass, “Mom, that tickles my timbers!”

Happily, it’s genetic~