Meaning
An unintentionally funny misuse of a word, substituting a similar-sounding word that is ludicrously wrong in context, such as 'statue of limitations' for 'statute of limitations'. The term covers both the habit and the individual blunder; it is used mainly in literary and journalistic commentary and is gently mocking, aimed at speakers reaching for fine language they cannot quite handle. Conversational to literary; always teasing, aimed at pretension to elevated vocabulary. Regional use: General English (literary eponym; source play 1775).
Origin
Named for Mrs Malaprop, the word-mangling aunt in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 comedy The Rivals, who hopes her daughter will 'reprehend' a young man's meaning and calls him 'the very pine-apple of politeness'. Sheridan built her name on the French phrase mal a propos, ill-timed or inappropriate, already naturalized in English as malapropos by the 1660s. The noun was coined about fifty years after the play: both Merriam-Webster and Etymonline date it to 1826, and from the start it named the ambitious misplay of impressive words.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- malaprop
- malapropian
- malapropos
Usage Examples
- His insistence that the report was 'a suppository of good ideas' remains the office's favorite malapropism.
- The mayor's malapropisms, from 'electoral collage' to 'statue of limitations', became local legend.
- One malapropism after another made the witness's grand testimony unintentionally comic.