Mainland. What are the longest words that we can weave by stringing together a series of two-letter state postal abbreviations? “Stately words” of four letters abound, from AKIN (Arkansas + Indiana) to GAME (Georgia + Maine) to ORAL (Oregon + Alabama) to WINE (Wisconsin + Nebraska). About twenty combinations of six letters can be found, from ALMOND (Alabama + Missouri + North Dakota) to INCOME (Indiana + Colorado + Maine) to VANDAL (Virginia + North Dakota + Alabama).

Eight-letter strings are rare as black pearls. In fact, the only common examples of such postal-abbreviation words are CONCORDE (Colorado + North Carolina + Oregon + Delaware), GANYMEDE (Georgia + New York + Maine + Delaware), MANDARIN (Massachusetts + North Dakota + Arkansas + Indiana), MEMORIAL (Maine + Missouri + Rhode Island + Alabama), and-ta da—MAINLAND (Massachusetts + Indiana + Louisiana + North Dakota).

(See MISSISSIPPI.)

Malapropism. When people misuse words in an illiterate but humorous manner, we call the result a malapropism. The word echoes the name of Mrs. Malaprop (from the French mal a propos, “not appropriate”), a character who first strode the stage in 1775 in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals. Mrs. Malaprop was a garrulous “old weather-beaten she dragon” who took special pride in her use of the King’s English but who, all the same, unfailingly mangled big words: “Sure, if I reprehend anything in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!” She meant, of course, that if she comprehended anything, it was a nice arrangement of epithets.

From The Rivals, here are some more of Mrs. M’s most malapropriate malapropisms:

• Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in account;—and as she grew up, I should have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries.
• She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
• Alliterate him, I say, quite from your memory.
• He’s the very pineapple of politeness.

The giddy ghost of Mrs. Malaprop continues to haunt the hallowed halls of language. Here are some authentic, certified, unre-touched modern-day malapropisms:

• If you wish to submit a recipe for publication in the cookbook, please include a short antidote concerning it.
• I don’t want to cast asparagus at my opponent.
• The mountain is named for the Reverend Starr King, who was an invertebrate climber.
• The fun and excitement of childhood are nothing compared to the fun and excitement of adultery.
• I refuse to answer that question. It’s too suppository.
• I took up aerobics to help maintain my well-propositioned figure.

(See BLOOPER, CHARACTONYM, MONDEGREEN, SPOONERISM.)

Manatee (from the Carib manati, “breast, udder”) is the most astounding result of all looping anagrams, words in which the front letter is looped to the back, or the back letter to the front, to form a new word, in this instance emanate/manatee.

Other super-duper loopers (also called cyclic transposals):

choice/echoic

ether/there

gelatin/elating

heart/earth

height/eighth

lease/easel

ought/tough

trio/riot

Some triple loopers:

eat/ate/tea

emit/mite/item

route/outer/utero

sear/ears/arse

stable/tables/ablest

stripe/tripes/ripest

And an enlightening three-word looper: cabaret = a bar, etc.

You’ll grin at the ring of bright letters,

Like a sprite with esprit having fun.

You’ll rove over anagrams looping.

You’ll laugh till you ache at each one.

The heart of the earth is the looper.

Your face will show miles of smile.

It’s an echoic choice that ought not to be tough.

Aye, yea, they’re not evil or vile.

(See AYE.)

Marshall. The only name in English that I can think of that can be charaded (cleft) in three places to reveal three different pairs of words:

mar shall

mars hall

marsh all

(See ALKALINE, DAREDEVIL, PASTERN, TEMPERAMENTALLY.)

Maverick. Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803–1870), a San Antonio rancher, acquired vast tracts of land and dabbled in cattle raising. When he neglected to brand the calves born into his herd, his neighbors began calling the unmarked offspring by his name. Today this word has come to designate any nonconformist—anyone who refuses to follow the herd. Pluralized, it’s also the name of an NBA team that is often clipped to Mavs.

(See GERRYMANDER, SANDWICH, SIDEBURNS, SILHOUETTE, SPOONERISM.)

Mentally. Transposing clusters of letters in words to form new words yields an exclusive group of words. Excluded are reverse compounds, such as boathouse/houseboat, huntsman/manhunts, birdsong/songbird, and shotgun/gunshot; particle verbs, such as takeout/outtake, oversleep/sleepover, and upset/setup; and repetitions, such as yo-yo, fifty-fifty, and pretty-pretty.

I call these switcheroos “fortunate reversals.” Six-letter exhibits include:

ablest/stable	bedlam/lambed	enlist/listen
errant/ranter	ripest/stripe	selves/vessel

seven letters:

ingrain/raining

kingpin/pinking

redrive/rivered

respect/spectre

and eight letters:

barstools/toolbars

mentally/tallymen

(See LATCHES, UNITED.)

Metalious. Movie stars Judith Anderson, Bela Lugosi, Rosalind Russell, Blair Underwood, tennis stars Gussie Moran and Guillermo Vilas, golfer Justin Leonard, and Civil War general Ambrose Burnside (who eponymously bequeathed us the word for those sweeping sidewhiskers called sideburns) are among the luminaries whose first and last names together contain all the major vowels. But is there a more compactly voweled surname than that of Grace Metalious, author of the mega-selling small-town exposé Peyton Place?

(See AMBIDEXTROUS, FACETIOUS, SEQUOIA, ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT, UNCOPYRIGHTABLE, UNNOTICEABLY.)

Metaphor. This seminal word and concept goes back to the Greek meta , “over, across” + pheréin , “to carry.” A metaphor, then, is a figure of speech that merges two seemingly different objects or ideas and carries us from one realm of existence to another.

You might have been taught that “a is like/as b” is a simile (“I’m as jumpy as a puppet on a string”) and “a is b” is a metaphor (“life is a cabaret, old chum”). But almost all metaphors present only the b, and the reader or listener infers the a. Thus, for example, when you make “a spur-of-the-moment decision,” the moment is, figuratively, a rider who leaps upon you, the horse, and digs his or her spurs into your flanks.

We usually think of metaphors as figurative devices that only poets create, but, in fact, all of us make metaphors during almost every moment of our waking lives. As T. E. Hulme observed, “Prose is a museum, where all the old weapons of poetry are kept.” That’s why I never metaphor I didn’t like.

Metaphors be with you!

Much as I hate to stick my neck out on a limb, I’m as happy as a pig in a poke to share with you a selection of my favorite mixed metaphors—miscegenated figurative comparisons guaranteed to kindle a flood of laughter in you. It’s time to fish or get off the pot and to take the bull by the tail and look it in the eye:

• A virgin forest is a place where the hand of man has never set foot.
• The bankers’ pockets are bulging with the sweat of the honest working man.
• During the Napoleonic era, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes.
• I came out of that deal smelling like a bandit.
• I have a mind like a steel sieve.
• They’re biting the hand of the goose that laid the golden egg.—Samuel Goldwyn
• She was a diva of such immense talent that, after she performed, there was seldom a dry seat in the house.

(See CHIASMUS, HYSTERON PROTERON, IRONY, METONYMY, OXYMORON, PARADOX, ZEUGMA.)

Metonymy. When we use the crown to refer to a monarchy, the brass to refer to the military, and suits to refer to business people and other professionals, we are in each case employing a metonymy, a label that stands for something else with which it is closely associated.

When we call an athlete a jock, we are shortening the athletic supporter known as the jockstrap and metonymously making it stand for the person’s identity. The connection has become so figurative that women, who never wear that equipment, are also called jocks.

(See CHIASMUS, HYSTERON PROTERON, IRONY, METAPHOR, OXYMORON, PARADOX, ZEUGMA.)

Mississippi. How many letters are there in the state name of Mississippi? Eleven, of course—but one could also say four—m, i, s, and p. In letter patterning, Mississippi is clearly the best of the state names, rivaled only by Tennessee. Both names contain just one vowel repeated four times, three sets of double letters, and only four different letters.

But Mississippi has the distinction of containing a seven-letter embedded palindrome—ississi; three overlapping four-letter palindromes—issi, issi, and ippi; and a double triple—ississ. And each year is crowned a new Miss Mississippi, whose title consists of three double triples—Missmiss, ississ, and ssissi.

Here are some more art-of-the-state insights into the letters in our states:

• Connecticut. What begins with a union and ends with a separation? The answer is Connecticut, which can be charaded into the oxymoron Connect I cut.
• Hawaii is the only state with a double vowel. HAWAII is also the longest state whose capital letters are vertically symmetrical and will thus appear the same in a mirror. The other three are IOWA, OHIO, and UTAH.
• Kentucky ends with its own postal code.
• Maine is the only one-syllable state. The curtailment Maine/main is homophonous.
• Massachusetts is, with thirteen letters, the longest single-word state name. North and South Carolina match the length of Massachusetts in two words.
• Minnesota uses every letter to form the anagram nominates.
• New Mexico is the longest state name consisting entirely of alternating consonants and vowels (within each word). Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Oregon, Nevada, Texas, and Utah also adhere to this pattern.
• New York’s capital, Albany, ends with the state’s postal code.
• It’s a foregone conclusion that if you behead and curtail foregone, you end up with Oregon.
• South Dakota is the only state that shares no letters with its own capital—Pierre.

(See MAINLAND.)

Mondegreen. To the surprise of many rock-and-roll enthusiasts, Jimi Hendrix sang, “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky,” not “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”

• George Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue, not Rap City in Blue.
• “Clown control to Mao Zedong” is at least as colorful and imaginative as David Bowie’s original lyric, “Ground control to Major Tom.”
• And if Davy Crockett was “killed in a bar when he was only three,” who was that at the Alamo?

The word mondegreen was coined by Sylvia Wright, who wrote about the phenomenon in a 1954 Harper’s column, in which she recounted hearing a Scottish folk ballad, “The Bonny Earl of Murray.” She heard the lyric “Oh, they have slain the Earl of Murray / And Lady Mondegreen.” Wright powerfully identified with Lady Mondegreen, the faithful friend of the Bonny Earl. Lady Mondegreen died for her liege with dignity and tragedy. How romantic!

It was some years later that Sylvia Wright learned that the last two lines of the stanza were really “They have slain the Earl of Murray / And laid him on the green.” She named such sweet slips of the ear mondegreens, and thus they have been called ever since.

Children are especially prone to fresh and original interpretations of the boundaries that separate words in fresh and unconventional ways. Our patriotic and religious songs and vows have been delightfully revised by misspelt youth:

Jose, can you see
By the Donzerly light?
Oh, the ramrods we washed
Were so gallantly steaming.
And the rockets’ red glare,
The bombs bursting in there,
Grapefruit through the night
That our flag was still rare.

I pledge the pigeons to the flag
Of the United States of America
And to the republic for Richard Stans,
One naked individual, underground,
With liver, tea, injustice for all.

Our Father, Art, in Heaven, Harold be Thy name. Thy King done come. They will be done On earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our jelly bread, And forgive us our press passes As we forgive those who press past us. And lead us not into Penn Station, But deliver us some e-mail …

When I was a lad in 1943, I adored a popular nonsense song titled Mairzy Doats, sung by The Merry Macs. The refrain sounded meaningless:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey.

A kiddley divey, too, wooden shoe?

Eventually the idea dawned on me that I was listening to a bunch of words with their edges blurred. Turned out most of the lyrics were mondegreens, although that word hadn’t yet been invented. The lyrics of the bridge, however, provide a clue:

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,

Sing “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.”

That opened up my ears to the last line of the refrain: “A kid’ll eat ivy, too, wouldn’t you?”

(See BLOOPER, MALAPROPISM, SPOONERISM.)

Mother. The word for mother (and mama and mom) in an astonishing array of languages begins with the letter m—mater (Latin), mere (French), madre (Spanish), mutter (German), mam (Welsh), mat (Russian), ma (Mandarin), me (Vietnamese), mama (Swahili), makuahine (Hawaiian), and masake (Crow Indian). Could it be more than mere coincidence that this pervasive m sound for words maternal is made by the pursing of lips in the manner of the suckling babe?

(See BASH, SNEEZE.)

Mumpsimus. The Century Dictionary tells “the story of an ignorant priest who in saying his mass had long said mumpsimus for sumpsimus and who, when his error was pointed out, replied, ‘I am not going to change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus.’”

Mumpsimus, then, denotes stubborn adherence to an erroneous view, as in “He persists in believing the old mumpsimus that a woman’s place is in the home.”