Word Play - Just spit it out

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, May 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s time for our regular request for prerolls! Our stash is running a little low. So, if you’ve always wanted to hear your own voice introduce the program, now’s your chance.

Go to worldandeverything.org and click on “The World and Everything in It” in the top menu. Once you’re there, click on “Record a Preroll.” That will tell you everything you need to know.

REICHARD: Well, as you’re recording your preroll, you might find yourself getting a little tongue tied. It happens to us all the time! Our resident word expert, George Grant, might not be able to explain why our tongues trip us up so often. But at least he can put a name to the problem.

Here’s this month’s Word Play.

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: It can happen to the best of us. When our minds are befuddled, our tongues can become muddled. When our thoughts are jangled, our words can become tangled. When we’re under stress or feeling duress, in private conversation or public declamation, we just might stammer or mangle our grammar. It has happened to me. I’m sure it has happened to you—even if only on a rare time or two.

Baseball great Yogi Berra is perhaps more famous for his habit of stumbling over sense and syntax than for his Hall of Fame career in Yankee Stadium. The countless Yogi-isms attributed to him are classic: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” “You can observe a lot by just watching.” “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” “No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.” “Baseball is 90% half mental.” “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.” “It gets late early out here.” “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.” “Even Napoleon had his Watergate.” “I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.” “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

This sort of misspeaking is technically what is called “Malapropism.” It is the inadvertent use of the wrong word or phrase, often rendering sentences hilariously nonsensical. The term comes from a character named Mrs. Malaprop in “The Rivals,” a five-act comedy written by Richard Sheridan in 1775. Like Yogi, Mrs. Malaprop constantly stumbled over her sentences—much to the amusement of everyone: “He is the very pineapple of politeness!” “She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.” “I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning. I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries.”

Shakespeare used malapropisms to great effect in several of his plays, perhaps most memorably with the bumbling sheriff Dogberry in “Much Ado About Nothing.” “O villain! Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this.” “Get the learned writer to set down our excommunication and meet me at the jail.” “Our watch, my lord, have indeed comprehended two asspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined.”

As you may have surmised, malapropisms can take any number of different forms. A mondegreen is an inadvertent mishearing and then a subsequent misspeaking of a word or phrase—"the cattle are lonely, the baby awakes.” A spoonerism occurs when letters or syllables get swapped around in words or phrases slip of the tongue—or a “tip of the slung.” An eggcorn is an alteration of a word or phrase, reinterpreting it as a similar-sounding word—“it’s just a pigment of your imagination.” Malapropisms all.

And they can be anywhere and everywhere. President Bush was famous for them—as is President Biden. Great Britain’s Prince Consort, Philip, was known to be prone to malapropisms. Of his many gaffes, solecisms, and bloopers, he once declared “Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, which I've practiced for many years.”

Indeed, haven’t we all?

I’m George Grant.

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