There was a bit of a tangent on one of yesterday’s threads, where we talked a bit about common sayings that morph into something else. Deliberately or otherwise.
My favorite is in the title, and I also liked “we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it”, which a couple of different people shared.
Also, for some reason, I like to say “I must be psychotic” when any other normal person would say “I must be psychic.”
What are some of yours favorites?
Another Scott
TIL that there’s a word for that. “Eggcorn”.
NPR – 100 Eggcorns.
Similarly, KissThisGuy.com for misheard lyrics.
Cheers,
Scott.
worn
“it’s just spilt milk under the bridge…”
Elizabelle
For an ironic take, I always liked “We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.”
NeenerNeener
@Another Scott: I read somewhere that misheard lyrics are called “mondagreens”, from mangling the lyrics to ELP’s Lucky Man. Instead of “and laid him on the green” people were singing it “and Lady Mondagreen”.
Oh, and the way one of my managers used to say the bridge one was ‘We’ll burn that bridge when we’re on it”. Totally tongue-in-cheek, as a comment on corporate decision making.
M31
Hey, you baked your cake so now lie in it.
The Dangerman
@Another Scott:
Foghorn?
I thought for a long time that there was a bathroom on the right (maybe that was Weird Al inspired),
Back to sleep.
germy
“Throw a monkey into the wrench” was my father’s way of saying “mess something up.”
I always hear “I could care less!” and I remember when it was a parody. People would say it in an old European accent. Now people are serious when they say it.
I predict “It’s not rocket surgery!” will be used in all seriousness someday, rather than as a clever mashup of the rocket science and brain surgery expression.
Percysowner
I hate [insert here] with the passion of a thousand burning nuns.
Lyrebird
Yes, “burn that bridge when we get to it” is pretty standard and intentional in our family.
Don’t know what inspired this, but I saw this morning’s tagline as “Makes me wish I had hoarded more lingerie” (it’s really “linguini”), but that was funny.
Thanks WG for the new thread, and thanks AL for the necessary news…
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Similarly, Crash Blossoms:
Language is fun!!
Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts – Talleyrand.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
I still can’t get over how the “necessity is my mother’s invention” guy would boast to female employees about the blow jobs that awaited him at home.
It truly was a different time.
tomtofa
Someone once told me “If we were in their shoes we’d be in the same boat.”
germy
I remember listening to a Lenny Bruce monologue and he says “For all intensive purposes” but not as a joke. He really thought that was the expression. It was in the middle of a serious rant on the law.
Mike G
“For all intensive purposes”
edit: Someone beat me to it
Another Scott
Usually heard at the start of Atlanta baseball games:
“… and the home, of the, Braves!!”
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@germy: It really was a different time.
debbie
@germy:
My favorite cartoon on my cubicle wall.
debbie
Growing up with three brothers, my favorite was “You’re a legend in your own mind.”
MomSense
My grandmother used to say “come again when you can’t stay so long” but she was very cheeky.
germy
@debbie:
I like that one!
My favorite is the “school for gifted children” cartoon.
Or the husband and wife cat whose cat neighbors come to visit every time they hear a can being opened.
narya
For me, it has always been “drive off that bridge when we come to it.”
germy
In print, I still see “with baited breath” used a lot.
germy
@narya:
I think that originated as a typically tasteless National Lampoon magazine joke about Ted Kennedy. That’s the first time I saw that expression, anyway.
BerkeleyMom
At the end of a long day when my kids were little, I used to say: it’s time to throw the baby in the bath water.
Miss Bianca
Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin) on Firefly gave me one of my current faves: “If wishes were horses, we’d all be eatin’ steak!”
prostratedragon
The color of another horse.
prostratedragon
You and me and Leslie, groovin’ …
cmorenc
“If it ain’t fixed, don’t break it”
oldgold
”I couldn’t care less“ to the nonsensical “I could care less.”
prostratedragon
“With liver tea and justice for all” was drawn by Schultz in Peanuts, but I know I heard it in about 1st grade, the reason being that one day the light came on for one kid, and on the “b” he blew the plosive heard round the world.
Matt McIrvin
Early They Might Be Giants lyrics reveled in this stuff.
“Laugh hard, it’s a long way to the bank”–line from “Rhythm Section Want Ad”, prominently lifted decades later by Modest Mouse
“Stand On Your Own Head” is a song whose lyrics are all mutated phrases and sayings.
“Stand on your own head for a change / give me some skin to call my own”
“You made my day, now you have to sleep in it, now you have to sleep in it / I love the world and if I have to sue for custody, I will sue for custody”
RSA
@Another Scott: Here’s a list of malapropisms from (of course) Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s 1775 play, beginning with
eddie blake
@RSA:
don’t you mean, “a list of ‘mallard-props-in-him'”?
Another Scott
Most of these funny things we don’t see in writing before we hear them. And hearing is far from exact.
(via Popehat)
On topic – This reminds me of “safety deposit boxes”.
And, the verbal tics like, “the point is is that” instead of the old standby “um”. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
smith
The Brits have a saying that amuses me every time I encounter in my reading. You know how we search with a “fine-toothed comb?” They do that, too, but apparently over the years it’s been corrupted to searching with a “toothcomb.” Whatever that is.
prostratedragon
I myself was myzzled for an embarrassingly but hilariously long time. Nothing like that moment of clarity.
glc
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from a bulb.
NotMax
“It’s the greatest thing since sliced wheels.”
As for lyrics, M. Jackson: “The chair is not my son.”
Old Dan and Little Ann
I always thought it was, “Play it by year” even though it makes zero sense. Now I know it is, “Play it by ear” I still say year cuz I’m stubborn.
S. Cerevisiae
You folks have already given most of the ones I have heard but my favorite misheard lyric is:
”the girl with colitis goes by…”?
germy
“I’m going to memorize your name and then throw my head away.”
(Oscar Levant)
(Just a weird saying that never caught on)
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: And there also is trying to say what one has only seen, e.g. mine above. A friend who took art history remarked that you could tell people who hadn’t been to class by their pronunciation of Klee.
CaseyL
I think this one came from a foreign-born friend of the family, still struggling with English idioms:
“Don’t count the teeth in the mouth of the horse someone gives you as a present.”
It is a sort of family treasure.
Another Scott
And every American child learns their letters the same way…
” … h, i, j, k,
elemeno pee,
q, r, s, …”
Cheers,
Scott.
Aimai
The old expression is “chalk it up” but a common misstatement is “cough it up” as in “ lets just cough it up to experience.”
Another Scott
@prostratedragon: Excellent point!
“naked” always looked wrong to me for the longest time because I grew up in Georgia hearing the word as “necked”.
Cheers,
Scott.
JanieM
Jared Diamond: “Invention is the mother of necessity.”
RaflW
I’m quite partial to “Don’t just do something, stand there!”
Added bonus that often, in an urgent situation, that’s decent advice. Stop and assess, don’t panic.
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: Me too, with lots of Mississippi family. In fact that’s precisely one of the words that helped me learn about accents.
Anotherlurker
“He is a legend in his own mind” works well for so many on so many levels..
Mike in Oly
I’m quite partial to ‘it’s not rocket surgery!’.
WaterGirl
@germy: I really liked that one, but knowing the origina spoils it for me.
oldster
Siobhan on the BBC comedy W1A has a touch of Mrs. Malaprop. She constantly tries to speak a blend of Valley Girl + Silicon Valley Disruptor + Brooklyn Hipster, and constantly gets it wrong. Her version of “let’s do this” comes out as “let’s nail this puppy to the floor.”
Another Scott
@prostratedragon:
Merry Mary got Married.
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Anotherlurker
” Tow the line.” should read “Toe the line”, a reference to bare knuckle boxing.
Uncle Cosmo
@M31: “You buttered your bread, now lie in it” – Bugs Bunny, IIRC.
Also a fan of “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.”
RaflW
When I moved to MN, a friend who moved up around the same time, also from Austin, tried to convince Minnesotans that there was a Texas aphorism “You can’t stomp a snake with both feet in a bucket.”
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t catch on. But it became a sort of in-joke for a small group of us ex-Texans.
WaterGirl
I like the story of the school teacher who was looking at the nativity scene drawn by a 5-year old.
Kindly taking notice of various things in the drawing, she points to the fat man who is part of the nativity scene, and asks “and who is this?”
That’s Round John Virgin, the boy replies.
WaterGirl
A lot of these are making me laugh out loud.
FridayNext
I first heard the phrase “I’ve got dirt to scratch and eggs to lay” to say you are busy and had to get back to work, from Colonel Henry Blake on M*A*S*H when I was a kid. But of course, Blake being Blake he said “Got eggs to scratch and dirt to lay” so that’s what I thought it originally was until I was in high school.
kindness
Lowell George’s Easy To Slip: Try to remember to forget.
Always liked that line.
MichaelEmmett
5 out of 4 people don’t understand statistics.
Uncle Cosmo
Old Playboy cartoon: A skeleton sitting on a front stoop dressed all in black, wearing dark glasses & carrying a tin cup and a white cane; finger ringing the doorbell, labeled SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF.
In somewhat the same spirit of ludicrous juxtaposition as this.
SiubhanDuinne
A stitch in time is worth two in the bush.
Too many cooks can’t be choosers.
Shit or cut bait (alternatively, Fish or get off the pot).
Don’t count your chickens in one basket.
wonkie
Off like a snail at full gallop from…I’m not sure what the original was.
I come from a family of Pogo enthusiasts so we had some obscure family sayings from Walt Kelly: Flap on your own side. Who’d a thunk it?
Salt Water Cleanse
“Let’s circle the wagons and move forward.”
“A flash in the pants.”
And my all-time favorite: “Kitten caboodle.”
prostratedragon
@WaterGirl: Sometimes you’re better off not knowing.
@WaterGirl: Oh yeah. Light from a bulb … help!
dnfree
@prostratedragon: we still use “mizzled” if we think we were purposely led astray. It sounds more intentional.
wonkie
Re: Round John Virgin upthread. I little boy told me that he was from Corpus Crispy, Texas. I treasure that.
dnfree
@Aimai: sometimes there’s also “chuck it up” to experience. I think it’s because kids now don’t use chalkboards in their youth.
Michelle from Chicago
Lo and behole
prostratedragon
@dnfree: Nobody talked about “meta” back then, but it’s how I met the concept.
The Golux
A friend’s wife once revealed this interpretation of some popular lyrics, to much hilarity:
All around, people lookin’ half dead
Walkin’ on the sidewalk
Hollerin’, “Got a match?” – “Yeah!”
planetjanet
On the subject of misheard lyrics, it was just a few months ago, that I realized the name of a particular Eurhythmics song was “Mystery Achievement”. I had always sung along to that song on the radio as “Mystery G-man”. No, it did not make sense, by oh, my, my, oh, my, my, my!
SiubhanDuinne
I like to play with consonant digraphs when I pronounce words such as shorthorn (shore thorn), straphanger (straff anger), or potholder (poth older). I do know how they’re pronounced; I just think it’s funny.
AndyG
It’s time to shit or get off your high horse
dnfree
When we were young our parents told us we were going to move to Pie Crust Drive. We thought that was awesome. Imagine our disappointment to see the sign for Pine Crest. We didn’t wind up moving there anyway.
Uncle Cosmo
IIRC there was a visual on a NL inside front cover: VW floating on a river in the foreground** with a narrow bridge in the distance. Caption:
(Not sure if that predated the nasty crack in the cited post.)
** The context (for you young’uns): VW ran a TV ad in the 60s with a Beetle floating in the water to demonstrate its airtightness.
prostratedragon
One of my deliberate mangling is, Everyone gets their own case of gout.
WaterGirl
@wonkie:
That is totally adorable.
SFAW
I often say, about myself, “I have a mind like a steel sieve.”
Although it’s more of a mixed metaphor than a
Spoonerismpalindromeanagrammalapropismwhatever TF the term is, I recall reading some tech “pundit writing that “Linux is a tsunami which will spread like wildfire.”Gary K
Let me recommend the Language Log blog for many more examples of mondagreens, crash blossoms, hypernegations, mistranslations, etc.
dnfree
I worked in a factory once where the plant nurse would say mysteriously, of some administration decree, “That [stuff] don’t run uphill forever!”, meaning eventually it would come back to bite them in the [butt]. It made no literal sense, but it always made me laugh, because why would it be running uphill in the first place?
Bill in Section 147
@NeenerNeener:
American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term In a 1954 essay in Harper’s Magazine, writing that as a girl, when her mother read to her from Percy’s Reliques, she had misheard the lyric “layd him on the green” in the fourth line of the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray” as “Lady Mondegreen”.
I read this originally in a Herb Caine column in the SF Chronicle. I just grabbed the wiki for the above.
Ella in New Mexico
Various iterations of Alzheimer’s disease including “old-timer’s”, “all-time’rs” and “eldtimer’s”
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: I remember that article. One reason my hat’s off to anyone who’s learned somewhat idiomatic English as a second language.
WaterGirl
@Aimai: I think I might laugh out loud if I heard that one.
Uncle Cosmo
IIRC many moons ago there was a Murphy Brown episode where the characters were comparing mondegreens. The only one I remember was someone who heard “The ants are our friends” in “Blowin’ In The Wind.”
(ETA: My own admission of gilt – For a good while after The White Album came out I thought the line from “Revolution” was “But if you go carrying pictures of Chen and Mao” – and I clearly recall going to some trouble to look up Chen Yi& then explaining to a college classmate who he was in the CCP hierarchy, when he set me straight…& I looked for the nearest sewer grate to crawl into…)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Another Scott: That one has been the source of “arguments” in our house. My wife (Long Island) is vastly amused by the fact that those are all the same word for me (the flat accent of Syracuse and the central NY region).
I figured my accent was weird so I’m very surprised to see I’m in the majority on this one.
As for the main topic, we do a few of these but it’s always ironic. “Mute point”, “I’m ambidextrous about that”, or “baited breath” which I usually precede with “like the cat who ate cheese…”.
WaterGirl
@dnfree: Possibly a reference to shit running downhill?
WaterGirl
@SFAW: Yeah, I wasn’t sure what these kids of things are called, either. I decided not to look it up because I didn’t want to limit the conversation to just one kind of messed up thing with words.
dnfree
@prostratedragon: in my 1950s childhood, my Midwestern brothers and I would torment my Floridian cousin, about age 5. “Say ‘car’, Nikki”, we would say. “Cah”, she would reply. “No, ‘CAR’”, we’d say. “CAH!” She’d shout. Eventually we’d get what we were waiting for when she would scream “Ah CAINT!”
raven
My wife loves to say “what you got cookin up your sleeve?
Mquirk
“Not the brightest knife in the drawer” & “Not the sharpest bulb in the chandelier” are favored sayings in my family. My favorite though was my grandfather mixing two opposing sayings and coming up with “The squeaky nail hammers the grease.”
WaterGirl
@Mquirk:
“The squeaky nail hammers the grease.”
I hope that was on purpose, because it’s really funny, and if it was an accident it’s kind of sad.
Sure Lurkalot
There must be a malapropism in there somewhere…oh there isn’t.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Another Scott: Once read some southern wag explaining that “naked” is not wearing clothes but “nekkid” means you’re going to get up to no good.
dnfree
@wonkie: we still have Pogo sayings in our family, too! Glad someone else remembers.
prostratedragon
@Mquirk: That has confused me so badly as to erase the one I just thought of from my mind. (No great loss given the embarrased riches on nekkid display here.)
Misswhatsis
“They don’t have a leg to hide behind.”
Tracy
I worked with a guy, who when it was time for the team to do a difficult task would say, “Let’s nick it in the butt”. I thought it was funny and kind of fitting, so I never told him it’s really “let’s nip it in the bud”.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Random thought, now I’m wondering if these happen in other languages, or happen to the same extent.
dnfree
@WaterGirl: oh, definitely, but the uphill part made no sense, and she always said it as a dire warning for the powers that be.
Roger Moore
My personal favorite is “Let those who live in glass houses throw the first stone”.
Catherine D.
Not a mixed saying, but my Irish grandmother’s phrase for “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” was “he didn’t lick that off the grass”
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: oops!
Jackie
@narya: And, for me it was “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” meaning no sense in worrying about it til we have to.
brantl
My in-laws (and my wife) say “Nip it in the butt”; colorful imagery, at least. An ex-girlfriend used to say “How can I miss you, when you won’t go away?”, I didn’t take it personally, she said it to a lot of people.
WaterGirl
@Catherine D.: I love that one.
I love so many of these that I have never heard before.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: That was the original “bridge” one, I believe. The rest are all a play on that one.
Fair Economist
@wonkie:
This thead is more fun than a barrell of monk keys.
Just another demonstration that they fry EVERYTHING in the South.
EmanG
My dad always used to say I was “wise beyond my ears”
Also, “and the rest was hysterical” (as opposed to history). It’s old but I got it from Steven Van Zandt
Grover Gardenr
A woman I worked with in theater years ago was a master of unintentional malapropisms. The one I remember best is, “What a nice house you have! It’s right out of Betty Homes and Crocker!”
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Along those lines: Is the bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Omnes Omnibus
@planetjanet: Mystery Achievement is a Pretenders song.
chopper
you buttered your bread, now sleep on it
Another Scott
@Uncle Cosmo: I sheepishly recall talking with colleagues in grad school and one of them mentioned something about ptomaine poisoning and I thought I was being helpful by saying it was “tomate” poisoning. Hilarity (of a sort) ensued. My excuse – I had heard Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh on a bad AM radio too many times… :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
lurker
necessity is a mother
RaflW
@SiubhanDuinne: Poth older was a family fav in the kitchen of my youth. As was Spetula Clark, which is just nonsense play with names, but fun.
citizen dave
Haven’t read the thread, but the post reminded me of a favorite of my mother’s when she was ranting (we would call it today) about regrets and whatnot: It’s water under the bridge.
I always would think about the big steel bridge near my grandparents place in the country (my mother’s parents).
lurker
a camel is a horse made by a committee – not quite with the original spirit of the post, but leads to
the question about unix is whether it is Bactrian or dromedary?
RaflW
@SFAW: Alternate: Mind like a steel trap door. I’ve used that on myself more than once.
Citizen Alan
My mother was of the deeply held belief (never corrected by me) that “suspicion” was a verb. As in, “I suspicioned that was the case.” She also once congratulated me on my cooking by saying “We should call you diamond because you’re even better than Emerald Lagasse.”
And speaking of lyrics, I was in my 20s when I finally realized that Steve Miller was not actually singing “Big hotel and a lighthouse, don’t carry me to far away.” And for the longest time, I thought the Prodigy lyrics from “Breathe” were “Great Depression! Come play the Gay Contessa!”
I also once nearly got into a shouting match with a friend who was convinced that the line from Beck’s “Loser” (“Soy un perdedor”) was actually “So, open the door.”
Big Mango
Even a blind squirrel touches his nuts sometimes…..
Chief Oshkosh
@Another Scott: I swear to fuckin’ god, between the fuck-ups in the MIC and the fucked-in-the-head FBI, I can’t tell who’s worse. And they are so fucking EXPENSIVE.
CaseyL
Oh, if we’re now talking about any verbal slip, then a spoonerism my Mom blurted out umpetty ump years ago is now a family classic: Dazed glonuts.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Citizen Alan: When the Andrews Sisters recorded their hit “Bei mir bist du schön”, record stores got a lot of people asking for “Buy me a beer, Mr. Shane.”
(The lyric is Yiddish not German and “schön” is pronounced “Shane”).
RaflW
@Another Scott: Dunno if it’s a verbal slip or what, but my mother swore that she couldn’t correctly remember the acronym VCR (which was newfangled then).
She’d always say, if my dad was running late and going to miss his Nightly Business Report: “Put the tape in the PQR!
She was also totally befuddled by Rack and Pinion Steering. Which came up more often than one would imagine in those days (TV ads, I’m pretty sure. She was also very proud — rightly so, for her generation and time — of having bought a car by herself at the dealership). She’d either call it Rack and Pinion Stinion, or Rack and Peering Steering.
WaterGirl
All these shared family memories are a surprise, but a happy one!
OzarkHillbilly
People who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.
Chief Oshkosh
@dnfree: Well, it did shoot out of a tight orifice, didn’t it?
Barbara
@JanieM:
The motto of tech and pharma companies everywhere!
My favorite, a tongue in cheek deliberate inversion by people who have to deal with the actual expression: “work-free drug space.” Some of my co-workers in the glass factory I worked at in college resembled that remark.
germy
In the early 1960s my father would refer to any TV listing magazine or newspaper as “The Cue”
“Where’s the Cue, I want to see what’s on” etc. I never understood it.
It wasn’t until many years later that my mother explained he’d had a subscription to “Cue Magazine” before I was born. And so any publication with TV listings was therefore The Cue.
lurker
@Barbara: Have seen and heard lots of resemblances to a remark… some deliberate…
Steeplejack (phone)
(Haven’t read the comments yet.)
My RWNJ brother, for all his faults, has a (generally) good sense of humor. He collects these things and throws them into the conversation to tweak somebody or to get a laugh from those in the know. E.g., “for all intensive purposes,” “your point is mute,” etc.
There go two miscreants
I don’t have a new one to contribute, but I am loving this thread!
When I was a kid, one of the Baltimore papers (pretty sure it was the Sun) ran a comic called “Jackie’s Diary” that almost always included a lot of manglings like these. “Lo and be old” was probably the most routine of them. And of course, as others have mentioned, Pogo was a treasure chest of examples!
prostratedragon
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Years and years ago I thought it was I’m here, Mr. Shane.
scav
@RaflW: I’m afraid one of our family’s was the Scessors Chavez. Another of Dad’s was How can I have molasses when I ain’t had nolasses yet?
eclare
@Barbara: Hahaha…my friends were fond of “I resemble that remark.”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Steeplejack (phone): I had a boss once come by to personally thank me for correct use of “moot” in an email. Apparently he dealt with a lot of “mute”.
LeftCoastYankee
“The early word gets the berm.”
eclare
@Steeplejack (phone): And then there is Joey on Friends, saying something is a “moo” point. Because a cow said it.
scav
Ah, who can forget the Police’s Married in a coal mine? I could practically see the MTV video . . .
FelonyGovt
Not exactly the same, but we’re all big fans of Bugs Bunny’s saying “What a maroon!”
And for misheard lyrics, I can never forget that great Creedence song, “There’s a Bathroom on the Right”.
RaflW
@eclare: This entire thread is just le moo juste!
Geminid
“The pothole at the end of the rainbow.”
eclare
@RaflW: Oh that’s good!
Ruckus
@lurker:
Just showing the type of people I hung out with it was always
necessity is a mother fucker
I may have heard it that way in the navy.
lurker
@Ruckus: yeah … the briefer version was for more polite company
And the allowance for someone to complete the thought allowed one to see it click after we said it.
WaterGirl
@scav:
What does that one mean?
CaseyL
More, courtesy of my Mom’s old boyfriend, who grew up on Rockaway Beach, NY and swore these were common in his neighborhood when he was a youngster:
Referring to eggs as “cackleberries,” and chickens as “mother of cackleberries.” Chicken soup therefore became “mother of cackleberry soup.”
Calling any outlandishly false behavior or statement “Bullshit and bark at the moon.”
He was also the first person I heard use the expressions “Piss up a rope,” “take a flying fuck at a rolling donut,” and “take a long walk off a short pier,” to or about people who pissed him off.
germy
@WaterGirl:
mo = more
morelasses
like mo’ money.
Kelly
Hoyt Axton’s “Joy to the world”
I thought
“I’d throw away the cars and the bars and the wars
And make sweet love to you”
was
“I’d throw away the cars and the bars and the WHORES
And make sweet love to you”
Jenny Howard
@Salt Water Cleanse: a friend of mine named her cat Kitten Kaboodle.
cwmoss
@debbie: I have always believed that the rocket in that Far Side is a direct allusion to an Al Jaffee bit from MAD. Bears too much resemblance to be coincidence.
Karen
Confused + Puzzled = Confuzzled
Fantastic + Fabulous = Fantabulous
scav
@WaterGirl: Just say it aloud with a little extra length on the os in the two lasses. Then again, it was a father.
VeniceRiley
@scav: CANARY IN A COMA.
That’s what I thought it was.
Kelly
Back in the mountaineering and rock climbing days of my youth we used the word uppendicular to describe really steep routes.
WaterGirl
@germy: Got it, thanks!
Steeplejack (phone)
@eclare:
Yes!
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack (phone):
I wish I could remember my brother’s other favorite one. I have been racking my brain to no avail.
It was a word that a colleague at one of his jobs used—several times, because no one would correct him. Anyway, it was not this word, but the mistake was similar: pronouncing antithesis like anti-thee-sis instead of an-tith-esis.
I think we previously had a long discussion here about us precocious child readers thinking that misled (“my-suld”) was the past tense of the verb misle, which for some reason we never encountered in the present tense.
ETA: Memory jogged. I think the colleague’s clanger was hypo-thee-sis instead of hy-poth-esis.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: I always thought it was wracking my brain, but the internet tells me that these days wrack and rack are pretty much interchangeable. Who knew?
Super Dave
As a youngster growing up in Texas in the 50’s, we learned to read phonetically. I think I was somewhere between 10 and 12 years old before I discovered that “Bob war” was actually barbed wire.
namekarB
A girlfriend from the dim past broke up with me because (among other valid reasons) I took her for “granite.” Not too far off the mark.
3YO son: I need a fly swapper
Me: What do you want to swap for it?
3YO son:. ???
Steeplejack
@Aimai:
This reminds me of “butt naked” replacing “buck naked” with young(er) people. Sort of ambivalent about that one, to be honest. ?
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
I don’t think they’re interchangeable, but I think wrack is more ruinous or damaging. Rack is more like straining or taxing. But, hey, Google “rack vs. wrack” if you want to go down a (deep) rabbit hole.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
(Wanted to make this a separate comment.)
One thing I have noticed recently is almost everyone talking about “getting vaxxed” or “anti-vaxxers,” etc. I fell into that myself, although something about it bugged me, and then I realized that we have other similar words.
“The Senate axed that part of the bill.”
“I have received several faxes on the subject.”
“The budget is maxed out already!”
“The anti-taxers are planning a protest against taxes.”
“The moon is waxing.”
So I am trying to become comfortable with vaxed, vaxing, vaxes, etc. Still looks slightly weird.
WaterGirl
@Super Dave: laughing
Lukeness
A bird in the hand makes waste.
J R in WV
@Anotherlurker:
I always thought it was “tow the line”, a reference to canals and the horses pulling the barges with a line to the tow path where the horses walked.
As a very young, I watched stern-wheeler tow boats moving barges on the rivers when we visited great-aunts who lived alongside the Ohio and Kanawha rivers. Horses were before my time, I’m old, but not that old…
Tehanu
I remember the first time I heard “I could care less” and thought, well, that’s stupid. But then it became so common that I finally decided it just leaves out the second part: “I could care less, but it’s hard to see how.”
As for “toe the line,” it’s what track athletes do at the start of a race. I still don’t understand why people think it’s “tow.”
NotMax
@J R in WV
Not always, of course, but mules were more often assigned that task, AFAIK.
James E Powell
I grew up loving & imitating – much to my mother’s distress – the mangled language of one Terence Aloysius “Slip” Mahoney. I can’t remember most of them, but I still say “sympathize watches” and “optical delusion.”
cleek
FOY – basically means FYI, but the friend’s drunk relative who accidentally invented it mixed up FYI and IOU. so now we always use FOY instead of FYI.
scav
Another familial definition is to use the word “gollum” for exactly how he uses precious. Furthermore, desired things are gollums, things you really want to do are Machu Pichus. (Long story.) (Yes, communication with the outside world could be problematic. You’re probably better off.)
Skepticat
@debbie: I never hear rocket scientist without thinking of a long-dead friend on the Race Committee for my sailing fleet who was a Raytheon engineer. One day, they were having trouble figuring out the finishes in a regattta, and he said, “C’mon, we can do this—it isn’t rocket science.” After a pause he added, “But if it turns out we need a rocket scientist, I am one.”
KSinMA
@RaflW: In my house we like to call it a spatula oblongata.
Mo Salad
An entire thread and not one mention of Ricky from Trailer Park Boys. For shame. It ain’t Rocket Appliances.
Steeplejack
I just thought of another one, new to me: “I’ve got a pit in my stomach.” WTF?! No, you’ve got something in the pit of your stomach—a feeling, a fear, but not a pit (unless you’re saying that you swallowed the seed of a peach).
Auntie Beak
One of my dad’s favorites: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs… Maybe you just don’t understand the situation.”
Other MJS
Every time I see the correct “hear, hear!” (i.e, “listen to this”), I cheer.
Also, for years I heard “Baa, baa, baa; baa baa baran.”
In related news, my favorite word and thing is “paraprosdokian”;
template for which is Groucho’s “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.”
WaterGirl
@Auntie Beak: Another laugh-out-loud entry!
frosty
@Another Scott: In Baltimore it’s “OOOOOHHHH!!!! say can you see…”
Do they sing it during the anthem in Atlanta?
Kayla Rudbek
“Six of one and half a dozen of the other” was an expression I picked up from a law school classmate. “Trafficky” is what Mr. Rudbek and I use to describe many of the roads around here, “95 is so trafficky on the weekends.” And “persnickety” is what I say instead of anal-retentive, as I like the sound of the word a lot better.
prostratedragon
The hit song “Hypnotized” from Linda Jones, who was appalled when someone played it back for her and she heard herself singing, clearly, “Hypmatized.” Works well as a synonymn for “gobsmacked.”
Steeplejack (phone)
@prostratedragon:
OMG, it’s really obvious.
Marigold
@Steeplejack: Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only kid who didn’t make the connection between “misled” and “mis-led”! I also emphasized the “pillar” in “capillaries.”
My little brother, on the other hand, did malapropisms. The most memorable was on a car trip through farm country, where he wrinkled his nose and declared, “There’s so much cow maneuver!”
Big Mango
You can lead a whore to culture
but she may not like the art….
We’ll drive off that bridge when we come to it…
I used to slip these when meetings ran late…always got the delayed head snap….
dnfree
@Super Dave: I remember asking my first-grade teacher how to spell “bonearrow”. She didn’t know what I was saying, so I explained it was what the Indians shot at the cowboys. Imagine my shock to find it was two separate things and three words: bow and arrow.
dnfree
When I worked at a national laboratory in the 1960s, if asked “How many people work here?”, the standard answer was “Oh, about 50%”.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Marigold:
I found the thread where we discussed misled (and other stuff) before; it was last December. The link is to a comment from zhena gogolia. Not to pick on her, but I thought it was hilarious. She was embarrassed in grade school when she was reading aloud and referred to the “marty-red” president J.F.K.
currawong
“Well, that went down like a damp squid” someone close to me used to say.
texasdoc
@RaflW: The medical equivalent of “Don’t just do something, stand there” in a code blue is “First, take your own pulse”–said to our class of interns to get us to slow down and assess the situation before rushing in.
Barbara
@Steeplejack (phone): I was stopped by a teacher as I raced through a passage I was reading aloud with the word I pronounced as “meh-lanch-o-lee” (emphasis in the first syllable) i.e., melon-collie or melancholy. No one made fun of me because they didn’t know it either.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Barbara:
Good outcome. It’s got to be hard sometimes for teachers to handle those situations (if they’re even sensitive to them). Kids are easily embarrassed.
I remember when I worked at Barnes & Noble a kid came in, middle school age, and asked for a CD by Fratellis (“Frah-tell-iss”). I thought, “This kid is is probably excited to buy his first CD by the first group he’s started to like, and he’s going to get stuffed in a locker when he talks about it at school.”
So I was like, “Okay, let me look on the computer. Yes, the Fratellis [‘Frah-tell-ees,’ Scottish band with Italian family name], we have their album. The Fratellis are over here in this section. Here’s that album by the Fratellis for you.” Trying to play the clueless old guy so he wouldn’t feel seen and get embarrassed. Hope it worked. I think it did.
prostratedragon
Once my brother made some smart-assed comment about Leftover Thursday dinner. After a brief, intensely quite chat in another room with our father, he came back in sheepishly and apologized to mother for “casting dispersions” on her efforts. I think she managed to accept the apology, but it wasn’t easy.
AnthroBabe
Surprised someone hasn’t yet mentioned “sowing your oats” – I see it written as “sewing” and have this hilarious picture in my mind of someone trying to put a needle with thread through some oats. Also “supposebly” instead of supposedly. My brother made funny Christmas cards with “I couldn’t care less” on the back instead of Hallmark’s ” When you care enough” tag line. I treasure them!
The Lodger
Magnarvelous. I just said that one day.
Slwalczak
I had an aunt who was known for unintentionally mixing up words and cliches that at first sounded right but soon had you scratching your head. My favorite: instead of saying the well known “there’s method to my madness,” she said “There’s madness in my system.” ?
WaterGirl
@Slwalczak: Not exactly the same! :-)
Nelson
it’s a doggie-dog world