Grammar: Amphiboly 6

That's not quite what I meant... Put together the bits that belong together.

Why scientists are counting tiny marine creatures from space (@BBCNews)

Fact is London is a mess, from knife crime, muggings, vehicle theft, crazy house prices, filth and squalor, growing anti semitism. Then again Paris is in a similar state following a relative's recent visit. (@MoreTeaAlice. And a from needs a to.)

Meilicloth mens classic casual long sleeve shawl collar buttons down cable knit cardigan sweater for men with pockets

Tourists to be let inside royal home where Queen died for the first time.
Gentlemen lift the seat.

When I was little, I used to love going to see this house in Lerwick, Shetland, where a house always had three Christmas trees in each of their front windows. (@TheScribblerCMB . Pic shows three windows, with a Christmas tree in each. How about: Always had A Christmas tree in each of their THREE front windows?)

If not in, hide in garage. (To delivery man.)
Police shoot man with knife.

Refuse tip

Refuse to be stored in black plastic sacks and placed in the containers provided.

Giant Lobster Hunters (ITV4)

Shiny women’s wool shawl
Shepherds’ pie, family butcher

CROCODILES DO NOT SWIM HERE
WARNING HORSES SLOW DOWN
BADGERS KEEP OUT
DO NOT ENTER MIRROR (In shoe shop with mirrored wall.)
RESERVED ARCHDEACONS (Notice in cathedral. Someone asks: Where do the extrovert Archdeacons sit?)

GPs offering second jabs after only four weeks in Bolton to use up vaccine

How many people need to be vaccinated to get back to normal? (The Week)

Do women really like chocolate more than men? (BBC Radio 4)

VLCC: Very Large Crude Carrier
I like red and green apples.
Female pirate historian (Dr Rebecca Simon)

Aspiration: “giving every single person the dream of a better life”. (Andy Burnham Thanks, Andy. But I’d like a better life, not just a dream.)

More here, and links to the rest.

Malapropisms and Portmanteaus 12

As Humpty Dumpty explained, a portmanteau has two meanings packed up in one word. Wade Bradford nails Mrs Malaprop here. She (played by Selina Cadell, pictured) gets mixed up in the schemes of young lovers in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 comedy-of-manners The Rivals, and "often uses an incorrect word to express herself", for example: We will not anticipate the past, our retrospection will now be all to the future. Malapropisms are not just howlers, they improve on the original. Some are due to autocorrupt.

Conspiracy theorists love portmanteaus: sheeple, plandemic, scamdemic, Commiefornia, Brussels bureauprats, Demoncrats.

And some quite sensible people like to use silly names like Tony B. Liar, Keith for Keir Starmer; Orifice for Microsoft Office; Murica, Merkins, Usanians, Drumpf. (Sorry, Americans.)

In 2024 “true stories” are going around starring humans confused between condom and condiment, scrotum and sternum, Polish food and shoe polish, all colours of the rectum. It must be true, I overheard it in the supermarket.

I asked ChatGPT to come up with some malaprops, and this is its best effort: I’m like a kid in a candy storm!

Rich people just put their children in a quiche.
We must create repertoire with our neighbours.
It’s a subconscience decision.
This library is a vast suppository of knowledge.
Her heroic deeds must not be allowed to fade into Bolivian.
He was an armature at the game.
East is East and West is West and never the trains shall meet!

It’s a no-brainier!
The theory of evolution “looks like commie gobbily goop”. (gobbledygook)
I fanatacized about my origins.
The air was punguent.
Caviar emptor! (Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.)
There’s so much evil in the world that we can’t phantom.

Darling, you look particularly ravenous this evening! (ravishing)
I had my operation with local Anastasia. (Probably spellcheck error.)
Post hoc ergo prompter hoc.
Pool closed because of carnivorous.
She wore an orchid pinned to her shoulder as a croissant. (corsage)
He was a wolf in cheap clothing! (sheep's clothing, from one of Aesop's fables)
Have you met my magnificent other?
I’m a social piranha! (for pariah)
They were a tilted family.
Our soup is made from locally sourced indigents. (Ingredients – indigents are poor people.)


Why do 'intense' or 'disorder' have to be despective? I love intensity and I definitely am disorder. (@adhdult)

Amazing smell of harpsichord! (Architectural writer John Grindrod as it rains heavily for the first time in months – he means "petrichor".)

Marjorie Taylor Greene called a Petri dish a “peach tree dish.” She also called Gestapo the “gazpacho.” (@DashDobrofsky)

I don’t understand these alfalfa males. (@PearlsFromMyrna)

Get obtuse all you like, it is what kids are taught at a very young age. It’s called false endocrination! (@JasonSt46700879. He means something like: Disguise it all you like, kids are taught that humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor.)

Artists don't have much chance against the gamekeepers /curator's. We used to moan about critic's but they only beat you around the head. Curator's sufficat you. (@cloonconra. May be a typo for gatekeepers, but I like “the gamekeepers of art”. And that's "suffocate".)

The world is in a terrible state of chassis. (Playwright Sean O’Casey, attrib.)

It’s what I call Mary Berry food rather than Chateau de Foie Gras food. (Hotel Inspector, B&B owner)

It’s a thriving, cosmopolitan hubbub. (Martin Roberts on Homes under the Hammer)

Psychic palm and terror card readings: speical offer! By Mrs Eli, Tell past, present and future.

Why is the syncofancy on every BBC channel? (@Pady_oFurniture, sycophancy.)

"I attach a daft translation" I write to someone, with irreproachable professionalism. (@BelgianWaffling)


Say it in American:
impastor
Barochitecture
durbockle (debacle)


Portmanteaus:
diagnonsense
bitchcraft
non-brainary
fivehead (high forehead)
prehab
gentryists
shrinkflation
gundamentalists
mantrums, testeria, HIStrionics
non-brainary
Tescopolis
luminal (luminous and liminal)
cottabunga (Let's build lots.)
moanoglots (people who moan when others speak Welsh on TV)
minocracy (In power in the UK these days.)

Obaminations
invisiclues
Peckerwell (Camberwell and Peckham in South London)
Glostocracy (the elite of Gloucestershire)
tank-thinkers and crankademics (@t0nyyates)
voluntold
tragesty
somnambuscripting (AJB)
hopium
hibernacle
agrannoying (TG)
biografiends (James Joyce)
blanditry (architectural – especially recladding an old building in the latest style)
prosumer
soapnesia (Amnesia conveniently suffered by soap characters. I had a daughter 18 years ago?)
salariat

Malaprops:
decapitated coffee
Vodafone for Voltarol
paralysed milk (pasteurised)
the prime miniature
roast beef and criminalised onion relish
cemeramic, abeautor, defliperator (ceramic, abbatoir, defibrillator – NJ)
longetivity
the placego effect
The Utter Hebrides
suave jacket (It’s “Zouave”.)
tittering on the edge of a precipice
chez longe (How many ways are there of spelling "chaise longue"?)

elemental cheese for Emmenthal
Pigmillion effect for Pygmalion
monothealastic
refinery for finery
conspirituality
Fleabay (AJB)
us lesser morsels (mortals)
Free Plasticine!
Satanizing (sanitising)
spouncering (sponsoring)
opinuated
partisan bakery (artisan)
defunk (defunct)
Mazel Tov cocktails (Molotov)

More here, and links to the rest.

Grammar: Similes, Good and Terrible 10

What was it really like? Try not to try too hard.

The lights of the city streaked off below him like the luminous spokes of a warped wheel. An indistinctly outlined, pearly moon seemed to drip down the sky, like a clot of incandescent tapioca thrown up against the night by a cosmic comic. (Cornell Woolrich, The Bride Wore Black. Fortunately his writing is usually pretty plain.

We are prisoners of our belief systems and, if our belief systems are threatened, good evidence peels off our brains like a fried onion off Teflon. (How about “evidence SLIPS off our brains like fried onion off A TEFLON PAN”.)


Not quite hyperbole...

Something comes over writers when they want to mention high cheekbones or cut-glass accents. They frequently get the two confused. If you could grate Parmesan on Joely Richardson’s cheekbones she must have awful skin, poor thing. 

"Joely Richardson (pictured) looks unnervingly similar to her mother, both angular and willowy, with cheekbones that could grate parmesan." Loren Hale has “cheekbones that cut like ice”. Cheekbones that you could cut cheese on. She had cheekbones that could grace the prow of a stealth fighter. (Allegedly from a book called Snow Crash.) Could cut diamonds. Could slice you if you got close enough. Looked as though she’d stuck a clothes hanger in her mouth. Could be seen from a mile away.

Writers also reach for  hyperbole when trying to say that an actor’s performance was wooden. Quora suggests that "the kind description would be to say that the performer gave a studiously understated performance". However, writers tend to invoke Rentokil and the Forestry Commission and tie themselves into knots. Displays all the emotion of a plank of wood, wouldn't be out of place in a forest – these are mild examples.

And the same goes for scene-stealing and scenery chewing. "A common term for a scene where an actor's acting so damn hard that they're picking bits of scenery out of their teeth for days." (tvtropes.org) "It's time to wolf down the scenery like there's no tomorrow." "No scenery was actually harmed in the making of this movie." If you know of a better periphrasis, do let me know.


It’s extremely time consuming and most of the time it's like remonstrating with woodworm. (Simon Hicks)

My mother, clearly instilled with images of us all floating through the Alps, gave us Nimble once. Only once. It was like eating fog. (@ronmanagernottm)

Young Labour are paper dolls living in a house of cards. (@blackbirdpeeja, paraphrase)

A man 'realising he's a woman', whether after a fancy dress party or not, is on a level with my own realisation that I'm a small village in Cornwall with spectacular sea views. (@PhilBur69397549)

The only department store that appears to be still punching above its weight is Selfridges, but increasingly it looks like a beautiful, bejewelled buckle on a tatty leather belt covered in jelly-coloured paste. (Dylan Jones in the Evening Standard. By “paste” I think he means fake stones rather than jam. How about "looks like a genuine gold buckle on a rhinestone belt"?)

He responded with a silent look of horror and revulsion as if I had just told him I wanted to wear his face as a mask and go on a stabbing rampage. (Youtube commenter)

Starmer hints at baby steps to improve the current Brexit deal. RW media descend like swarms of angry wasps.  (@edwinhayward)

Stop being disappointed when a celebrity folds like a cheap lawn chair over the cult ideology. (@blackbirdpeeja)

They go round and round in circles like a bluebottle with one wing. (Joolz Denby, paraphrase)

God bless how stupid men are about make up. It's like watching a gerbil grapple with long division. (@JustRowena)

Maigret is driven from one suspect to another like a pachinko ball.

Like frost in sunshine, your sins will melt away. (Ecclesiasticus)

Sometimes 22 Bishopsgate looks like a glacier mint and sometimes “like a grey Mars Bar”. (Bob Hoskins)

Patricia Highsmith’s self-designed house was like a “run-down municipal swimming pool”. (Charlotte Mendelson, Times 2023)

The bewildering poetry of the King James Bible... has likewise been replaced by modern verses of stunning blandness, each one more like a brochure for council services than the last. (Jemima Lewis, 2023)

I felt like the tail-end of a misspent life. (Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair)

My sister's puff pastry – like eating a wet book. (Benny Hill)

Truss delivering that speech with all the charisma of a regional manager announcing a consultation on redundancies. (@entschwindet)

She has the demeanour of a reserve junior spokes-creature for Number 10. (WUR)

As thick as a canteen cup. (@DaiBevan1)

He remembered where he had seen Celia Harland, and when. A picture rose before his eyes, and it seemed to strengthen like a film in a developing-dish as Hanaud continued. (AEW Mason, At the Villa Rose)

Her sound is that of a serpent on the move. (Jeremiah)

Our Government will try to cling to power like super-glued limpets. (Donal Savage)

A new library in Fayetteville is blank on several aspects. It looks like an East German insecticide factory. (@sharp_architect)

Skinny jeans look like an Alaskan gold-miner’s underwear.

He looked as if he had been hastily assembled by a child out of bricks. (Agatha Christie, Nemesis)

I have built a rockery to plant flowers in, so there should be some colour to the place instead of it looking like a non-descript part of the USSR. (Nigel Jarman)

An over-cleared garden is like a “Protestant cemetery”.

I read quite a lot of Judith Butler for my PhD, it's like trying to eat soup with a fork. (@FemmeLoves)

A period of cloying reconciliation worthy of the ending of the sort of cheesy film shown on long coach journeys in Mexico. (Luigi Amara)

More here, and links to the rest.

Hypercorrection 2

 

Hypercorrection can doubtlessly happen to anyone whom has studied grammar for fewer time than to which they would like. (@StanCarey)

Top marks for day brightening to the person at work selling a recently re-covered two seater sofa with matching “poofay”. (@oddthisday.bsky.social)

Nice one from newsreader earlier this evening.  Pronounced 'Jesuit' as 'Jer - suite'. (@Dymvue)

It’s choreetho. Not choritso, chorizzo, choreezo or koritso. Choreeso is acceptable if you’re from Latin America or Andalucía. (@MitchBenn)

Someone on Mend it for Money has brought along a “shay longe” (chaise longue).

The old De Luxe cinema in Hastings is pronounced “De Loo”.

Antique dealer Raj Bisram says “Hello, I’m Raj” and people say “Hello, Razh”. Charles Hanson asks “Is it Raj or Razh?” “Raj.” Tim Wonnacott continues to call him “Razh” in the voiceover. (Say it as in "British Raj".)

See also Beijing, Taj Mahal, adagio, Sharjah, Giotto, Azerbaijan and The Glass Menagerie.f

Gareth Armstrong who reads Maigret currently is excellent, but he calls Madame Blanche "Madame Blonche" throughout.

In a Perry Mason episode, the town of Bayonne is called “Bayon” with a French accent.

Teresa of “Aveeeya”. It’s Teresa de Avila with the accent on the first A.

A French woman complained that British called frogs grenouEEEEEE, when they’re something like grenOOOOOOie (grenouilles). Also avoid putting a thumping stress on the last syllable of any French word or name, like Emmanuel Ma-CRON.  

R3 pronounces the ch of "Munich" as if Scottish eg "loch". No such place. Either mew-nick or Muenchen. (Nicholas Lezard)

RIP Buchi Emecheta, whom many called “Buchi Emencheta”. (See also Marlene Deartrick and Bob Geldorf.)

It’s not my forte should be “fort” not “fortay” because it’s French not Italian. (It's Italian.)

I was once mocked for saying enfilade as if it was French – but Fiona Bruce has just said it like that on the Antiques Roadshow! It also means a row of rooms without a corridor but doors in a line.

If you come from Cheshire, you may avoid the northern U by calling the place "Solihell", and rhyming the first syllable of cushion with “rush”.

Elrond to rhyme with menton, petit patapon etc, as if it was French. (And you pronounce the second N in the French town Mentone.)

cherchez la faim for cherchez la femme (Crime at Black Dudley, read by David Thompson), debutant for a female debutante (you pronounce the last T), Cezain for Cézanne, Mondrian as if it was French

panné velvet for panne, en massé for en masse, rosé quartz for rose quartz, sallé for salle (room). The entire paragraph is a grandé slap down. (Twitter)

accacciatura: Variously pronounced acky-acka-tura, achackachura or a-catcha-tura. The last is correct.

currier for courier (or “couri-ay”)

Veeyet for Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (It's more like Vee-lette. In a reading of Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table, Geraldine James keeps saying “meeeeee remerciements” instead of “meeel”. Mille remerciements, a thousand thanks. But how do you say “precisément”?)

Eau de Neeeee, Jacques-Emeee Blonche (Pronounce the L in Eau de Nil, Jacques Emile Blanche.)

Fewer than two weeks ago. In the US, fewer than half of people who apply for disability benefits – about 45% – are ultimately accepted. (Less than half.)  The UK accepts fewer than 1% of global asylum seekers. (“Less” is right here.)

Mark Françoise for François (A colleague called Françoise was referred to as François.)

Geshtapo, Keir Shtarmer, shmorgasbord, Epshtyne for Epstein (Epsteen), Gestapo, Starmer, smorgasbord. (Some middle-class people pronounce a name as they think it would be pronounced in the country of origin, even when the owner has anglicised it.)

marquee cut for marquise, marquee for an English marquis (MAR-quiss), Pair Lashay for Père Lachaise cemetery (rhymes with days)

Andrew Sabisky quickly became Sabinsky or Sabitsky – even on the news.

Skhiapparelli or Shiapparelli for Schiapparelli (It’s Ski-apparelli.) Kh on the beginning of croissant.

au naturale for au naturel

Gill Sans as if it was French, sans doute. (It's a sans serif typeface designed by sculptor Eric Gill.)

Adding an extra I to a Latin plural. One gladius (sword), two gladii; but one gladiolus, two gladioli. Genii for genie. (Genii is the plural for genius.)

ménage for manège (horse-training yard)

Douchey Originals for Duchy (Dutchy)

Louis Confort Tiffany (Comfort)

tumeric for turmeric

beastiary for bestiary (It’s like bestial.)

mako for macho, kletsmer for klezmer, Kay Guevara for Che (Chay) (Writer Gwen Raverat cringed when guests called the family’s dog “Sanko” – he was called after Sancho Panza from Don Quixote.)

tray for trait, coupe de gray or grah for coup de grâce

homage as if it was French (In English it's homidge. If you want to be continental, spell it "hommage".)

a cachet of weapons for cache

ambergreeee for ambergris (You're thinking of verdigris.)

Sharon for Pluto’s moon Charon (Surely Karen?)

Loi (as in French for law) for Loïs (Lowiss), Moët et Chandon as Mo-ay ay Chandon (It’s Moette.)

grande vizeeeay for Grand Vizier, Cartière for Cartier, loo-me-ay festival (lumière – loo-me-air),
Renier Lalique (René Lalique)

prey a manger for Prêt a Manger, vinagray for vinaigrette, Demaray for Demarest, Violay Szabo for Violette Szabo, Violette le Duc for Eugène Viollet-Le Duc (Viollay), Magree for René Magritte

skedooley for schedule (skedyool or shedyool)

trowma for trauma (rhymes with "former"), owral for aural

Kenwood’s orangerie (It’s an orangery.)

Lapsang Soushon as if French for Lapsang Souchong (and it's "Soutchong")

Many kudoi to him! (Kudos is not a plural.)

empañada for empanada, habañero for habanero, Cartageña for Cartagena, peña for pena

tour dé France for tour de France, denouément for dénouement, née plus ultra (It's "ne plus ultra" – Latin, not French.)

escabesh for escabeche (It’s escabaychay and it’s Mexican.)

guy-sher girls for geisha (gaysher)

détent for détente, Carcasson for Carcassonne, La Vie Parisien for Parisienne, bon chance for bonne chance, blang de sheen for blanc de Chine, rattan to rhyme with au gratin (ra-TAN), the poet Verlain for Verlaine – Radio3! And Americans think fillet is a French word (filet or feelay).


But how do you say Saint-Saëns? The fabric "faille"? And Puigdemont?

More here.

Grammar: Synecdoche 3

 

Candy striped

Part of a term comes to stand for the whole term.

You can’t just pander or be fodder. You have to pander to something or be fodder for something. (Fodder is animal food.)

I think we are barely starting to scratch the possibilities of language. (@ArturoGP_. Scratch the surface of...)

In Dickens, the Artful Dodger is known as "the Artful", and Susan Nipper as "the black-eyed". (Wasn't there a Greek goddess known as "the white-elbowed"?)


A podcast is now a “pod”. The pod was originally the device you listened to the podcast on.

About 40 years ago I was in a radio repair shop and overheard someone talk about his girlfriend’s “cassette” which was broken. He meant “cassette player”. But a “cassette” is a “tape cassette”, and the device was really a “tape player”.

“Hello, baby,” he said with his Cheshire smile. (The Love Machine, Jacqueline Susann. That’s “Cheshire-cat smile”.)

A flat is a flat tyre, but flats are flat shoes.

A paper carrier is a “carrier bag”. And if a “carrier” is a plane, it’s a “people carrier”.

Long-term progress has been glacial: It has moved at a glacial pace – a few inches a year, like a glacier.

hidebound: by tradition or convention
static park: park for static caravans

gyratory: gyratory system
dwell: dwell on it

dating to: dating back to (Shouldn't it be “dating from”?)
candy stripes: candy-cane stripes

sock: sock puppet
capsule: capsule wardrobe

contacts: contact lenses
dairy: dairy products

laser: laser printer
microwave: microwave oven

social housing, social homes: homes for poor people (From social services, “on the social”, social benefit?)

broach: broach the subject
raise: raise the question

Stap me vitals! Vital organs are meant.
town hall: town hall meeting

processed for commercially processed (which means “full of additives”)
Fracking is “Not very friendly”. (Environmentally friendly.)

divan: divan bed
sedan: sedan chair

the presence: the royal presence
the socials: social media

television: television set
viral: viral meme (Adjectiving is a young person’s thing.)

rending: heart-rending (not "wrenching")

We live in a fossil world. (A world that runs on fossil fuel, ie coal and oil.)

terrace: terraced house
hatch: hatchback

unscripted: unscripted programming
anti-trans: anti-trans ideology

Let’s drop the onshore wind ban: wind farm ban (The wind bloweth where it listeth.)

Get a grip! On yourself.

Raise X: raise concerns about X (“I’ll broach X about Y” means “I’ll broach the subject of Y with X”.

generous shed: generously proportioned shed
climate flooding: flooding caused by manmade global warming

incandescent: incandescent with rage

Master's: master’s degree (or “master of arts degree”)
hypopara (medical condition): hypoparathyroidism

windfall tax: windfall tax rebate (Puzzled me for years.)

Just seen “early onset” for “early onset Alzheimer’s”.

refinery: oil refinery
planning: planning consent

cleft: cleft palate
quality: high quality

Corny is short for cornball (“A ball of popcorn and molasses”, says the Free Dictionary.)
Slots are slot machines (playing the slots).
And “props” on aeroplanes are propellors. (Thought they were struts of some kind.)

More here, and links to the rest.