Malapropism: Absurd Or Humorous Misuse of a Word, Especially by Confusion with One of Similar

Malapropism: Absurd or humorous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound.

• "Why, murder's the matter! slaughter's the matter! killing's the matter! But he can tell you the perpendiculars."(Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Sheridan's The Rivals)
• "He is the very pineapple of politeness."(Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Sheridan's The Rivals)
• "That's another thing. I don't want to hear anymore how it was in your day. From now on, keep your antidotes to local color, like Dynoflow or the McGuire Sisters."
  (Tony Soprano to "Feech" La Manna in The Sopranos)
• "There's no stigmata connected with going to a shrink."(Little Carmine in The Sopranos)

maxim (Also known as proverb.)A familiar saying; a bit of community wisdom.
-"How easy it is to defeat people who do not kindle fire for themselves." (Kenyan maxim)

meiosisTo belittle, use a degrading epithet, often through a trope of one word.[Gk. "lessening"] "rhymester" for "poet"; "shrink" for "psychiatrist"; "treehugger" for "environmentalist."
memoryThe fourth canon of rhetoric.

metaphor The traditional meaning of metaphor is an implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.- "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York."(Shakespeare, Richard III, I.i)
- "The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
- "My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill."
(William Sharp, "The Lonely Hunter")
- "Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws awayfood."
(Austin O'Malley)
- "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." ( Matt Groening)
metonymy Substitution of some attributive or suggestive word for what is meant ("crown for royalty. Broadly viewed, metaphor indicates similarity, metonymy contiguity. Metonymy can also refer to the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it: for instance, describing someone's clothing or belongings in order to characterize the individual. Advertising frequently uses this kind of metonymy, simply putting a product in close proximity to something we want (companionship, beauty, happiness).-"The pen is mightier than the sword."
-"Have you read Faulkner?"
-"Her voice is full of money." (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
-"Bush has bombed Afghanistan and Iraq."
-"The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings."
-"Reverend Beadle has not always been a man of the cloth."
-"You're not in the ball park yet, but you have pulled into the parking lot." (combination of metaphor and metonyny)
mondegreenA delightful term if not a rhetorical one. Coined by the writer Sylvia Wright and popularized by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll (see ), mondegreen is the mishearing of a popular phrase or song lyric.
-"I led the piegons to the flag" (for "I pledge allegiance to the flag").
-"Excuse me while I kiss this guy" (for the Jimmy Hendrix lyric, "Excuse me while I kiss the sky").
-"Dr. Laura, you pickled man-thief" (for the Tom Waits lyric, "doctor, lawyer, beggar-man, thief").
-"bow and arrow transplant" for "bone marrow transplant."
onomatopoeiaFormation of words in imitation of natural sounds.
"[Aredelia] found Starling in the warm laundry room, dozing against the slow rump-rump of a washing machine." (Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs)

oxymoron The yoking of two terms that are ordinarily contradictory.
-"That building is a little bit big and pretty ugly." (James Thurber)
-"O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!" (Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions)
-"This woman had known the hot whispers of a man who loved her, entirely if not eternally. And that she had answered, fiercely soft." ("Chasing Down the Dawn," Jewel Kilcher)
-"Act naturally," "found missing," "alone together," '"peace force," "terribly pleased," "small crowd," "clearly misunderstood."

parableShort and simple story that points a moral. Similar to exemplum (a brief story used in medieval sermons to illustrate a moral) and fable.
paradoxA statement that appears to contradict itself.
-"The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot." (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)
-"I do not love you except because I love you;
"I go from loving to not loving you,
"From waiting to not waiting for you
"My heart moves from cold to fire."(Pablo Neruda)
paralepsisEmphasizing a point by seeming to pass over it. -"Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it.It is not meet you know how Caesar lov'd you."
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III.ii.136-51)

parallelismSimilarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. "It is certain that if you were to behold the whole woman, there is that dignity in her aspect, that composure in her motion, that complacency in her manner, that if her form makes you hope, her merit makes you fear."
(Richard Steele, Spectator, No. 113)
paranomasiaPunning, playing with words.
-"Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight . . ."
(Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night")
-"Look deep into our ryes." (Wigler's Bakery products)
-"All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the fear of the Law."(James Joyce, Finnegans Wake)

parataxisClauses or phrases arranged independently (a coordinate, rather than a subordinate, construction). (Opposite of hypotaxis.)
-"Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better--splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foothold at street corners . . .." (Charles Dickens, Bleak House)
parenthesisInsertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactic flow of the sentence.
-"The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the goddess success. That--with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success--is our national disease."
(William James, Letter to H. G. Wells)
parisonCorresponding structure in a series of clauses, either of same word to same word, or adjective to adjective, noun to noun, etc. (often found with isocolon), or equal length of clause or sentence.
"I have lov'd, and got, and told,
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery." (Donne, "Mummy or Love's Alchemy")
"He that is to be saved will be saved, and he that is predestined to be damnedwill be damned." (Cooper, Last of the Mohicans)

pathosMeans of persuasion in classical rhetoric that appeals to the audience's emotions.[Gk. "to experience, suffer"]
periodic sentenceLong and frequently involved sentence in which the sense is not completed until the final word--usually with an emphatic climax. Marked by suspended syntax. (Opposite of running style)
"Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed." (Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales)

personaVoice or mask that author or speaker or performer puts on for a particular purpose. Latin term (used by Cicero) for ethos.[L. "mask"]
personificationInvesting abstractions or inanimate objects with human qualities or abilities. Also known as prosopopoeia.
"Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality."
(Emily Dickinson, "Because I could not stop for death")
"And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes."
(T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")

phatic communionNonreferential use of language for the purpose of contact; ritualized formulas that prolong communication, attract the attention of the listener, or sustain his or her attention-"How ya doin'?" "Have a nice day!" "What's your sign?"
-"i have torn my heart out of my own body and
held it beating in my hands
to study it, to understand why
yet it will reveal nothing and just keeps on beating
stubbornly
even after being poked and squeezed rudely
even after i stomp on it.
my body seems to be more cooperative
lending me a sense of rhythm, of everyday life
when my mind acts like a scratched record.
i hide my blood wet hands when you call
and we talk about the weather."
(Laura Hartman, "talk about the weather" the 2river view, Fall 2001)

pleonasmUse of words to emphasize what is clear without them. [Gk. "abounding"]
-"The most unkindest cut of all." (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)
-"Let us gather together."
ploceRepetition of a word with a new or specified sense, or with pregnant reference to its special significance. [Gk. "weaving, plaiting"]
-"But thou art all my art, and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance."
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 78)
-"We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately." (Benjamin Franklin)
-"When you look good, we look good." (Vidal Sassoon ad)
-"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
-"When we come to work, we come to work."

polyptotonRepetition of words derived from the same root but with different endings.
". . . love is not love
Which alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove . . ."
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)
"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." (Robert Frost)
"A good ad should be like a good sermon: it must not only comfort the afflicted; it also must afflict the comfortable." (Bernice Fitzgibbon)

polysyndetonStyle that employs a great many conjunctions (opposite of asyndeton).
"We lived and laughed and loved and left." (James Joyce, Finnegans Wake)

prolepsis(1) Foreseeing and forestalling objections in various ways.
(2) Figurative device by which a future event is presumed to have already occurred.
-"In 1963, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Vickrey suggested that [automobile] insurance be included in the purchase of tires. Anticipating the objection that this might lead people to drive on bald tires, Vickrey said drivers should get credit for the remaining tread when they turn in a tire. Andrew Tobias proposed a variation on this scheme in which insurance would be included in the price of gasoline. That would have the added benefit of solving the problem of uninsured motorists (roughly 28% of California drivers). As Tobias points out, you can drive a car without insurance, but you can't drive it without gasoline."
(Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff, "Would You Buy Car Insurance bu the Mile?" Forbes 2005)
proverbShort, pithy statement of a general truth, one that condenses common experience into memorable form. Also known as adage, maxim, sententia.
-"Here's the rule for bargains: 'Do other men, for they would do you.' That's the true business precept."(Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit)