4mo ago

Is there a word for mangled idiom that becomes commonplace

Like "does the Pope shit in the woods?" or "that train has sailed?"

Also, what good examples can you think of?

95 comments

Malaphor
https://www.thoughtco.com/malaphor-word-play-1691298
- See also as related:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
  A mondegreen (/ˈmɒndɪˌɡriːn/ ⓘ) is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning.[1] Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense.[2][3] The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, recalling a childhood memory of her mother reading the Scottish ballad "The Bonnie Earl o' Moray", and mishearing the words "laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen".
  and
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism
  A malapropism (/ˈmæləprɒpɪzəm/; also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the incorrect use of a word in place of a word with a similar sound, either unintentionally or for comedic effect, resulting in a nonsensical, often humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed to baseball player Yogi Berra, regarding switch hitters, "He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious",[1] with the accidental use of amphibious rather than the intended ambidextrous. Malapropisms often occur as errors in natural speech and are sometimes the subject of media attention, especially when made by politicians or other prominent individuals.
  
  Though this is not for idiomatic phrases, there's also misnomer, for when something is named in a misleading or inappropriate manner.
  Though, different dictionaries seem to give different scope to what can and cannot be considered a misnomer, and others place different emphasis on precisely how the name is wrong qualifies it as a misnomer.
  Cambridge lists 'dry cleaning' as an example, a process that involves liquid and is thus antithetical.
  The focus is on something being named such that the obvious, plain reading of it implies the precise opposite.
  Merriam Webster lists that its a misnomer to call a farmer a peasant, which is not antithetical but more along the lines of being rude, out of date.
  Their conception of it is fairly broad: any name that is inaccurate for basically any reason, or even just a word that has offensive connotations due to inaccuracy.
  Dictionary.com uses the examples of Chinese Checkers, a funny bone, and hay fever.
  They focus the definition on the factual/historical inaccuracy of the term:
  Chinese Checkers did not originate in China, a funny bone is actually a nerve, not a bone, and hay fever is not caused by hay, nor is it a fever.
  
  Bone apple tea!
- Good pull. Malapropism has always been one of my favorite words and comedic devices, so this is good info. Bravo!
  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go read an article about the Women's Lubrication movement and eat my hot astronomy on rye.
  
  If you haven't, you might want to read Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin series, or at least to peruse this list from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AubreyMaturinSeries/comments/4ak12q/which_its_a_prodigious_great_list_of_aubreys/
- Maybe also egg corn?
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F12LSAbos7A&t=467s&pp=ygULTWFsYXByb3Bpc20%3D

We'll drive off that bridge when we get to it
- I usually go with “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”
  
  That's my favorite one to use
- I can't believe you got such a simple saying wrong. It's not rocket surgery.
  
  I need to start using this one, I already use "burn that bridge" fairly often
- I like "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it"
- No, the bridge is too well-guarded.

My buddy and I have a whole list of these…I started calling them masonism’s because he messes them up so often lol
“I don’t give a shit if he wrote the Mona Lisa!”
“I’m not attached to my hip!”
“I’m taking my own life…into my own hands!”
“How’s that for apples?”
“There’s not enough meat to play with”
“That’s a hit…and a miss!”
“If it weighs anything to you….”
“Jesus Christ! That’s slave robbery!
“Welp, I’m going to get hard at work”
“I’m making shit up out of my ass.”
“He was flopping back and forth” (flip flopping)
“I’m going to go tell this kid a piece of my mind…”
“Oh, here you go….you’re going to piss on my parade!”
“Don’t count your chickens before they turn into eggs.”
“Well isn’t that the horse calling the kettle black”
“Does a fat kid shit in the woods?”
“I can sleep through a rock!”
Ibanez AZ series guitars? Yea I know them like they’re in the back of my hand…”
“There’s a lot of onions to that…”
“I’m pulling it off my head”
“Knock the balls off!
-knock it out of the park/socks off
“That’s a double sided sword!”

“You can’t lead a horse to fish…”
- “Well isn’t that the horse calling the kettle black”
  I love this.
- “Welp, I’m going to get hard at work”
  Umm... Yeah, that TOTALLY never actually happens to me either.
  
  I can't get hard at work because there’s not enough meat to play with =/
- Im stealing these.
- I say "Same Difference" often and people hate it.

A malapropism? Does that apply? 🤔
That's like if you said "mute point" instead of "moot point."
- moo point.
  you know, the kind of thing a cow would say.
  
  How you mooin'? 😎
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62necDwQb5E
  
  Like a cow's opinion. It doesn't matter.
- You know, a cow's opinion

How the hell should I know, I’m not a rocket surgeon
- I'm a rocket sturgeon
  
  Sounds fishy
  
  Not exactly brain science, is it?
- Arguably, a mechanic who is literally performing maintenance on exceptionally mechanically dense and complex parts of a rocket, say the rocket engine plumbing or wiring harnesses... is figuratively performing rocket surgery.
  
  Or, taking a different perspective:
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1433409/
  Management of trauma and emergency surgery in space
  As on Earth, the major determinant of emergency surgical care in spaceflight may be the presence or absence of a well-trained surgeon.
  Sounds like they need a rocket surgeon!
- Now, that one does have its place. I either it in an ironic sense that you dont need multiple degrees to do something. The flip side is that the people we send to space tend to be the most qualified people in multiple fields, a medical surgeon with a stem degree does not sound too far outside the realm of reason.

"I could care less"
- You could and you should!
- This, plus "hold down the fort"

Get two birds stoned at once
- I like, "get two birds stoned with one bush" as some bastard amalgamation of "kill two birds with one stone" and "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"
  
  Two stones with one bird
- I use this one regularly

"It's not rocket surgery."
This one irks me. Combination of "rocket scientist" and "brain surgery".
- Nothing holds a bar to this as being my favorites, but I generally don’t pay much mind to idioms—they’re all water under a duck’s back.
- I'm personally a fan of "it's not rocket appliances"
- It's just people combining "it's not rocket science" and "it's not brain surgery". Just like the pope one.
  
  Yes, that's exactly what I thought I had implied.
  
  "Does a bear shit in the woods" and "it's not Pope surgery"?

The grass is always greener in the hand.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't look it in its mouth.
We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.
Caught with his pants in the cookie jar.
- That last one... goddamn, that's amazing.

"Not the brightest cookie in the crayon box" is an amalgamation of 3 different sayings I've been trying to make happen. It won't happen.
- My mom was fond of "Not the brightest egg in the drawer".
- I used to say not the sharpest cookie in the jar
- I do it in danish, but we have the idiom here too. I'll often make up a new one following the not the x y in the z template. E.g. Not the loudest spoon in the forest.

One of my standbys is “that horse has sailed”.

It's often called an eggcorn, and here's a really good video that touches on it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JTslqcXsFd4&pp=ygUMRWdnY29ybiBlcmlr
The weirdest one I used to hear often was "for all intensive purposes," like wtf is an intensive purpose?

I'm running around like a chicken with its legs cut off.
- Reminds me of my friend once saying that "the discussion leads nowhere. It's like the snake biting its tongue"

It's not rocket surgery.

The correct term is Rickyism

"The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." Meaning contracts, friendships, and keeping promises should take priority over family loyalty.
Now changed to "Blood is thicker than water" and means the exact opposite of the original.
- That is a common urban myth.
  https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/147902/is-the-alleged-original-meaning-of-the-phrase-blood-is-thicker-than-water-real

Does a bear shit in the Pope’s hat?

People in glass houses shouldn't get stoned

Not the brightest bulb in the shed
- In a similar vein, "not the sharpest spoon in the drawer"
- I always liked "not the sharpest bulb in the tree".
  (Because it kinda makes sense. Some Christmas lights have pointy bulbs. But nobody picks them for sharpness.)

"I'm lost for words"

I like ‘bob’s your oyster’ because both original phrases are nonsensical to me. Is there a word isometric to portmanteau but for phrases / idioms?

I thought "cakewalk" was a clever American amalgamation of "a piece of cake" and "a walk in the park".
Turns out it's actually related to slavery, so probably doesn't count.

Relevant xkcd

When referring to a difficult task: "That's a tough road to hold", or "a tough road to hoe", or "a tough road to [travel on]" or "a tough road to... [trails off awkwardly...]", or just "a tough road".
It's a tough row to hoe.
It's an agricultural metaphor. The row is a line of dirt in a field where you plant seeds. You use a hoe to dig the lines, remove weeds, and create little holes where you drop the seeds. Hoeing may be difficult if the soil is too hard or too full of rocks and weeds. Such a row would be a tough one to hoe.
- I understand how you got there, but it sounds like a tough hoe to plow.
  
  I thought most hoes would be quite easy to plow

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater else you'll end up with a wet, critically injured baby.

So, lots of examples, but not much on your question about terminology. In looking around a bit, I couldn't find a single specific term for a malapropism that "sticks," but you could fairly describe it as a form semantic drift driven by catachresis, thought the latter seems more common in literary criticism or philosophy than in linguistics.
- catachresis
  Ha! Here you are answering the actual question but nobody cares!
  Amazing. I had never seen this word before.
  
  Even then, I can't quite find a single Linguistics term for this phenomenon, where it becomes a thing of its own or even replaces the original. 'Eggcorn' and 'Malaphor' seem to be pretty decent casual terms.

I always liked "Hindsight is 50/50"

I don't know about the "becomes commonplace" part, but mangled idioms are generally called "malapropisms".

I know these as eggcorns thanks to Adam & Joe... https://youtu.be/GyAWSnwBJLA?si=UXqG273L2lOxk05h

Current pet peeve: "to step foot on". Facepalm! Just coz somebody misheard "set" doesn't make "step foot" grammatical. And yet here we are.

Malaphor.

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