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)
moanoglots (people who moan when others speak Welsh on TV)

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.