Toilsome travel
Minced Metaphors
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, Linda!”
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~
Ah, holiday travel. Or is it travail?
Turns out it is both, and not just due to unexpected cancellations.
late 14c., trauel; mid-15c., travell, "make a journey, go from place to place," from travailen (1300) "make a journey," originally "to struggle, toil, labor" (see travail (v.)). It is a variant form of travail, used in a specific sense, which has flourished while the old word faded.
The semantic development may have been via the notion of "go on a difficult journey," but it also may reflect the difficulty of any journey in the Middle Ages.
Either way, I hope your trip is safe, your trains and planes are on time, and your roads are smooth and dry!
You’re putting the apples before the cart.
Let's hit this show on the road!
That ship has left the station.
You can never go home again, no matter how far you've roamed.
It's a sinking ship gaining steam.
Thank you for stopping at the Verbihund Café!
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Not to go all scatalogical on you, but "You’re putting the apples before the cart" makes perfect sense when the applies are coming from the hind end of the horse pulling the cart.