Crossing swords with other snark-alecs can be the most entertaining and laughter-inducing activity. Whether one engages in a formal debate style of practice or simply cuts up with family and friends, the results are often breathtakingly ridiculous.
Moreover, correct delivery of metaphors is just a bridge toll too far. I am unabashedly metaphor-impaired, destroying and recombining perfectly serviceable idioms and other innocents on a regular basis. I collect others’ with glee, so 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 has saved my mental bacon many times.
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, Simon!”
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.
So, as my daughter used to say when she was but a wee sass: “That tickles my timbers!” Good job it’s genetic.
You might not be entirely surprised to know that when I was a kid, adults used to say things like, “You could argue the hind leg off a donkey!” and “You can get paid for arguing like that if you become an attorney.”
Likewise, I said the same things to my daughter. Adolescence bestowed upon her the hormone-charged energy, desire, and ability to argue about everything and nothing simultaneously.
Enjoy the following fraught forensic foibles!
Without further ado about nothing.
It’s wrung out of thin air.
That is well thought out of the question.
Fix all the facts in the core of your argument.
You’re in the lurch with a moot point.
Borrowed from French in the 1600s, the word originally referred to the weakest part of a fencing sword, that part being the portion between the middle and the pointed tip. The English foible soon came to be applied not only to weaknesses in blades but also to minor failings in character. The French source of foible is also at a remove from the fencing arena; the French foible means "weak," and it comes from the same Old French term, feble, that gave us feeble.
Thank you for foiling at the Verbihund Café!
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I have to go with "Without further ado about nothing." in honor of all the pointless meetings I attended in my working life.
My fave is “ you’re in the lurch with a moot point.”