WRONG WORDS
MALAPROPISMS
The word malapropism is derived from a character named Mrs. Malaprop in the 1775 play The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. To great comic effect, Mrs. Malaprop misuses words so that they don’t have the meaning she intends, but sound similar to words that do. Mrs. Malaprop malapropisms include: ‘Sure, if I reprehend any thing in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!’ and ‘illiterate him quite from your memory’. However, Sheridan wasn’t breaking new ground. William Shakespeare’s Constable Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing was clearly a blood ancestor of Mrs. M: ‘Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons.’
Many of us are unfortunate enough to unwittingly employ malapropisms in real life. The Australian politician, Tony Abbott, is no exception. ‘No one,’ he once told a party conference, ‘however smart, however well educated, however experienced is the suppository of all wisdom.’ While we’re on the subject of ‘repository’ misspoken as ‘suppository’… It was once reported in New Scientist that an office worker had described a colleague as ‘a vast suppository of information’ (rather than a repository or depository). The worker then apologized for his ‘Miss-Marple-ism’ (i.e. malapropism). The magazine suggested this was possibly the first time someone had uttered a malapropism for the word malapropism itself.
MONDEGREENS
A mondegreen is a misheard song lyric. There’s no doubt about it, one of the most embarrassing things in the world is when you’re caught singing the wrong words to a song. A friend had to explain that the Neil Diamond song ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’ wasn’t ‘Reverend Blue Jeans’ and that Chaka Khan sings ‘I’m Every Woman’ and not ‘Climb Every Woman’.
Over the past few years, I’ve taken to collecting such unintentional howlers from friends, family and acquaintances. The more embarrassing the mistake, the better!
Wrong line: ‘I got shoes, they’re made of plywood.’
Right line: ‘I got chills, they’re multiplying.’
Song: ‘You’re The One That I Want’
by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
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Wrong line: ‘Beelzebub has a devil for a sideboard for me.’
Right line: ‘Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.’
Song: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen
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Wrong line: ‘I’ll never leave your pizza burnin.’
Right line: ‘I’ll never be your beast of burden.’
Song: ‘Beast of Burden’ by The Rolling Stones
Wrong line: ‘Sweet dreams are made of cheese.’
Right line: ‘Sweet dreams are made of this.’
Song: ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)’ by The Eurythmics
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Wrong line: ‘The Dukes of Hazzard are in the classroom.’
Right line: ‘No dark sarcasm in the classroom.’
Song: ‘Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)’ by Pink Floyd
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Wrong line: ‘Sweet, sweet vasectomy.’
Right line: ‘Free, free, set them free.’
Song: ‘If You Love Somebody Set Them Free’ by Sting
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Wrong line: ‘I can’t stand gravy.’
Right line: ‘Constant craving.’
Song: ‘Constant Craving’ by k.d. lang
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Wrong line: ‘Accountancy is my friend.’
Right line: ‘The camel you see is my friend.’
Song: ‘Midnight At The Oasis’ by Maria Muldaur
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Wrong line: ‘She’s got electric boobs.’
Right line: ‘She’s got electric boots.’
Song: ‘Bennie And The Jets’ by Elton John
Wrong line: ‘You take a piece of meat with you.’
Right line: ‘You take a piece of me with you.’
Song: ‘Everytime You Go Away’ by Paul Young
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Wrong line: ‘They sent you a tie-clasp.’
Right line: ‘They said you was high class.’
Song: ‘Hound Dog’ by Elvis Presley
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Wrong line: ‘Bring out the arms of Nemo.’
Right line: ‘Break out the arms and ammo.’
Song: ‘Something In The Air’ by Thunderclap Newman
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Wrong line: ‘Right on the pee stain.’
Right line: ‘Ride on the peace train.’
Song: ‘Peace Train’ by Cat Stevens
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Wrong line: ‘They call her a tramp.’
Right line: ‘We’re caught in a trap.’
Song: ‘Suspicious Minds’ by Elvis Presley
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Wrong line: ‘Now I’ll never dance with her mother.’
Right line: ‘Now I’ll never dance with another.’
Song: ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ by The Beatles
Wrong line: ‘I believe in milk and cows.’
Right line: ‘I believe in miracles.’
Song: ‘You Sexy Thing’ by Hot Chocolate
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Wrong line: ‘And doughnuts make my brown eyes blue.’
Right line: ‘And don’t it make my brown eyes blue.’
Song: ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’ by Crystal Gayle
NEWSPAPER HEADLINES
SPOONERISMS
A spoonerism is an error in speech in which corresponding letters are switched between two words in a phrase, for example saying, ‘The Lord is a shoving leopard,’ instead of ‘The Lord is a loving shepherd.’ It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), the Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this mistake.
A blushing crow.
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A well-boiled icicle.
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Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?
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Is the bean dizzy?
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Kinquering congs their titles take.
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Let us drink to the queer old dean.
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Someone is occupewing my pie.
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Please sew me to another sheet.
That is just a half-warmed fish.
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The cat popped on its drawers.
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You have hissed all my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. Please leave Oxford on the next town drain.
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You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle.
GREAT MISQUOTATIONS
‘I never said I want to be alone.’
(I only said I want to be left alone.’)
—Greta Garbo
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‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’
(‘A little learning is a dangerous thing.’)
—Alexander Pope
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‘Money is the root of all evil.’
(‘For the love of money is the root of all evil.’)
—The Bible, Timothy 6:10
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‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’
(‘Abandon all hope, you who enter.’)
—The Divine Comedy by Dante
‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’
(‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.’)
—The Mourning Bride by William Congreve
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‘Come up and see me sometime.’
(‘Why don’t you come up sometime, and see me?’)
—Mae West To Cary Grant in She Done Him Wrong
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‘Pride goes before a fall.’
(‘Pride goeth before destruction
and a haughty spirit before a fall.’)
—The Bible, Proverbs 16:18
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‘Nice guys finish last.’
(‘Nice Guys Finish Seventh.’)
—Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher speaking in the days when the national league had seven teams so seventh was, in fact, last.
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‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’
‘Elementary.’
—Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson
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‘Hubble bubble, toil and trouble.’
‘Double double, toil and trouble.’
—The Witches in Macbeth by William Shakespeare
‘To gild the lily.’
‘To gild refined gold, to paint the lily.’
—The Earl of Salisbury In King John by William Shakespeare
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‘Me Tarzan, you Jane.’
—Tarzan and Jane pointed at themselves and each said their own name in Tarzan the Ape Man.
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‘Et tu, Brutus?’
‘Et tu, Brute?’
—Julius Caesar (In the unlikely event that he said those words, Brutus would have taken the vocative).
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‘When in Rome do as the Romans do.’
‘If you are at Rome, live after the Roman fashion; if you are elsewhere, live as they do there.’
—St. Ambrose
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‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’
‘Never inspect the teeth of a gift horse.’
—Original proverb
‘Discretion is the better part of valour.’
‘The better part of valour is discretion.’
—Falstaff, King Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare
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‘There’s method in his madness.’
‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.’
—Polonius, Hamlet by William Shakespeare
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‘In the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes.’
(‘In the future, there won’t be any more stars. TV will be so accessible that everybody will be a star for fifteen minutes.’)
—Andy Warhol
WHERE’S IT FROM?
PRIVATE EYES
In 1925, the American Pinkerton Agency — probably the most famous private detective agency in the world — ran an advertising campaign which featured a large picture of an eye and the slogan ‘We never sleep’. As a direct result of this advertising, private detectives became known as private eyes.
WHERE’S IT FROM?
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996 while they were studying at Stanford University, California. It wasn’t something they did in their spare time, it was actually a research project.
Back then, conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page. The Google Guys (as they became known) thought there was a better way of doing it: they made sure that when you entered a search term, you didn’t get the websites with the most times that the search term was mentioned — you got the sites that made the most sense to you, that was of the most value to you. And why? Because these were the sites, ranked in descending order of relevance, that all the previous people who had ever used your search terms had decided were the most useful to them. In other words, you were benefiting from cumulative knowledge and usage.
Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine ‘BackRub’ because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Later, they changed the name to Google, a play on the word ‘googol’, which is the number one followed by one hundred zeros. They picked this to show that the search engine would provide large quantities of information for lots of people.
The domain name for Google was registered in 1997 and the company Google was launched the following year.