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, Jena!”
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, 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~
In my house as a kid, any mention of ducking out of chores, chickening out, duct tape, ductwork, poultry in general, and even The Fonz’s DA haircut would prompt someone to start this classic muckup from the Marx Brothers’ film The Cocoanuts; someone else would pick it up, improvising and gesturing, and we’d be off to the races*…
Groucho, leaning over a map, pointing: “Here is a little peninsula, and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.”
Chico: “All right, why a duck?”
Groucho: “I'm not playing ‘Ask Me Another,’ I say that's a viaduct.”
Chico: “All right! But why a duck? Why that...why a duck? Why a no chicken?”
You’re a lucky duck today, so let some laughter roll off your brain feathers with these quacked-up attempts at metaphor…
He’s got his ducks in a twist.
We have to get all our ducks on the same page.
It's water under a duck's bridge.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it a duck.
Like water through a duck's ass.
* A small inside joke: another classic Marx Brothers movie is A Day at the Races
Thank you for swimming over to the Verbihund Café!
Got any grapes?
I really have nothing to say. Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well, I have others.