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Malapropisms
I used to work with a guy who had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from a very prestigious university.
When speaking during meetings, he often used the word “incantation” when what he actually meant was “incarnation”. I have no idea why he did this. I don’t think he did it on purpose but the effect on the unwary listener was…hilarious.
On one memorable occasion, he said this: “The product is able to do what you’re describing but it will require a modified incantation.”
Stone. Silence.
Crickets chirping in the distance.
Many worried, sideways glances all around the table.
It was glorious.
Please add your own experiences along these lines in the comments.
Published in General
I had one of the first “Voyager” phones from Verizon. It had the cool voice feature where I could just say “Call XXXX” and it would offer the person’s name from my contacts that most closely matched, and say “Did you mean XXXX?” I could respond yes and it would call the person or no and it would give up.
So I flew down to LA on a business trip, and I wanted to call the guy I was meeting up with to let him know I was on the way. I say to the phone “Call Jose”. I pronounced it Hose’ like it’s supposed to be pronounced. Phone responded “Did you mean Greg Jones?” I responded “No, call Hose’ “. “Did you mean Greg Jones?” Tried this 4 or 5 times and gave up – figured I should pay attention to the LA traffic.
Then it dawned on me. “Call Jose”, but this time I pronounced it to rhyme with “chose”. The phone responds”Did you mean Jose Barajas?” – and she pronounced it Hose’ . Stupid flippin technology!!!!!
I remember a cow-clock on an episode of “Cheers.” Lift its tail and it would say, “It’s nooooooon!!”
That I can agree with.
I worked with a lady who like to “voice-text”, talk into her phone and have her phone make it into a text. She was out of the office and she texted my boss. She said she would clean up the kitchen when she came back that evening. My boss informed her that I had already done it.
She wanted to respond, “I will have to thank him later”, but the text came out as “I will have to spank him later”! Sort of a “me too” incident.
Did you get your spanking?
I don’t spank and tell.
I had an Android phone that was in the habit of just choosing someone at random from my contacts and calling them.
Many years ago I was with all my brothers and sisters on vacation, arguing with a cousin on Facebook. He had replied to me “FFS”.
We were all trying to figure out the acronym (it’s a point of honor for us to NOT use our phones when we’re sussing out something insignificant and unimportant)
The very moment I hollered “For F****s Sake” in triumph, I heard “hello? hello? Annie, is that you?” from my phone. My phone had called a long-standing customer; he answered just as I yelled the answer.
He’s still a customer, he told me later that he changed my name to FFS in his contacts.
A variant I’ve heard is “a mute point.”
Another favorite: “scrapnel” for bomb fragments.
I might do the same.
One of the most amazing pieces of trivia I ever learned was that shrapnel was actually named for someone.
Lt Gen Henry Shrapnel
Never heard this one – sounds like a breakfast meat ;-)
And for breakfast. Mmm.
I once worked with a guy building offices for psychiatrists which had separate entrances and exits to maintain patients’ privacy, shown on the plans as ingress and egress.
He always referred to the egress as a ‘regress’.
Maybe he was on to something.
I just committed one in real time on JoelB’s thread. How embarrassing:
died-in-the-wool
Yikes!
I like the ones that almost make sense. My first boss used to complain about being “undulated” by paper work.
I also had a co-worker who would refer to a “mute point”
Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what you’re labeled as in people’s phones? My daughter had to change some choice words in her contacts list once her daughters learned to read.
Many of these examples are known as ‘eggcorns’, aka acorns. Mistaken pronunciations which nevertheless make sense, a mute point being a good example.
Seinfeld had a scene where he argued with Kramer, who was adamant about a “statue of limitations.”
Geotechnical engineering is all about the incantations.
This post is certainly a shoe-in.
Lift dat barge, tote dat bale…
A handful of years ago when I worked with my step-dad every day, I could have given you a number of examples. I can’t remember any of them now except for saying insinzinations when he meant insinuations. And he likes the word photovoltaic, but he threw a Z in there somewhere.
He had so many of them that he reminded me of the prison philosopher from the TV show “In Living Color,” who always wanted to sound high-brow but didn’t know what any of the words he was using meant.
That would be an unsuccessful wolf in sheep’s clothing.
There is no punk rock album titled “Never Mind the Bullocks”.
I could care less about this post.
That one drives me inane.
When one this sentence into German translate wanted, could one the fact exploit, that the word order and the punctuation already with the German conventions agree.
Some of these malapropisms might provoke someone to put the boot in.
My wife had a problem with typing a message into her cell phone. Whenever she typed “Veronica,” our youngest daughter’s name, it would be changed to “erotica.” She would edit it, and it would change to “erotica” again.
What’s really weird is that when I typed on the same phone, “Veronica” would come out right. I would hand the phone back to my wife, and if she typed “Veronica” it would still change to “erotica.”
And this was typing, not talking.
Her phone is putting the moves on her. Buy her a new one and crush the phone with a hammer (just in case).