The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Malapropism

Malapropism: A form of catachresis, or misuse of a word, in which a word similar in sound but different in meaning is used in place of the correct word, often to ludicrous effect. The term is named for Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play The Rivals (1775), who regularly uses words incorrectly, as when she asserts that she would “by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny [prodigy] of learning.”

FURTHER EXAMPLES: Mrs. Slipslop’s address to Joseph in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1741) is rife with malapropisms: “Do you intend to result my passion … ? Must you treat me with ironing? Barbarous monster! how have I deserved that my passion should be resulted and treated with ironing? … Do you assinuate that I am old enough to be your mother?” (emphasis added). The character Rachel, in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible (1998), is also wildly malapropistic, referring to her “feminine wilds” and making comments such as “I revert my eyes,” “I prefer to remain anomolous,” and “we Christians have [a] system of marriage called monotony.”

Television characters prone to malapropisms include Archie Bunker, who decreed “Case closed. Ipso fatso,” on All in the Family (1971—79) and Ali G of Da Ali G Show (2003—04), who, like Rachel, bungled the word monogamy when he ungrammatically inquired, “With men and women, does you think that men should marry only one woman? Does you believe in mahogany?” The former Negro League ballplayer of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s one-man show Lackawanna Blues (2001; adapted by HBO 2005) also frequently uses malapropisms, referring to the “Statue of Delivery” and the “Entire State Building” and explaining that he has “de roaches of the liver,” for which his doctor wrote him a “description.”