This is number eighty-four in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“GOOD NEWS, LENA,” said Ole. “I bought a condominium!”
“That’s wonderful,” answered Lena. “Now I can throw away the diagram!”
What a wonderful, rich vocabulary we have when it comes to a play on words. When one person can misunderstand another fluently, it is even better.
I read a work on SOL by a very popular and fine author, now deceased, titled Thunder and Lightening. I cringed a little. Of course, the author meant ‘lightning,’ I thought to myself. But the story by Lazlo Zalezac had a 9.03 rating and I wasn’t going to miss out on what he had to say.
Sure enough, the spelling was intentional and was the key to understanding the change in character of the leading male. I won’t give a spoiler as to how it was resolved, but I went from cringing to admiration.
When I released Going for the Juggler in 2016, oddly enough in another of Laslo Zalezac’s universes, I received a lengthy missive from a reader explaining that the vein in the neck is the jugular, not the juggler, and I should have someone proofread my work more carefully.
I spent an equally long email explaining about how authors sometimes use a play on words. Yes, the title brings to mind the phrase ‘going for the jugular’ as a kill-phrase. But the main character in the novel is a circus clown and juggler and the bad guys are going after him!
He sent back a message that simply said, “Face palm.”
I’m so glad I didn’t immediately respond to Lazlo when I read the title of Thunder and Lightening! (Which, by the way, MS Word still insists is misspelled.)
Going for the Juggler and the previous two books in the Hero Lincoln Trilogy are available as a collection or individual eBooks at Bookapy.
It’s great when we can consciously make a play on words, but what about when a word is misused by a person (or character) thinking they have used the correct word? When the word sounds similar but means something different, it is called a malaprop. Isn’t it amazing that we have words for just about everything?
The malaprop was named after a character in Richard Sheridan’s 1775 play, The Rivals: Mrs. Malaprop. This delightful old lady is constantly attempting to sound learned and sophisticated but can’t utter a sentence without a word that doesn’t mean what she thinks it means.
“Sure, if I reprehend any thing in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!” says Mrs. Malaprop. The meaning, however, is “If I comprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my vernacular tongue, and a nice arrangement of epithets"
Sheridan was by no means the first to use malaprops—in fact the term goes back as far as the 1600s. Even before that, Shakespeare’s famed character Dogberry from Much Ado About Nothing is known for the speech pattern that is also known by the name Dogberryism.
“Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons,” says Constable Dogberry, meaning “Our watch, sir have indeed apprehended two suspicious persons.”
Emily Litella, a character created on Saturday Night Live by Gilda Radner was known for her malapropisms. My favorite, especially at this time of year, was when she began her editorial speech with “What is all this I hear about presidential erections?” When she is corrected and told the term is ‘elections,’ she responds with her classic line, “Never mind.”
Sadly, the phenomenon is not limited to fictional characters or done for effect.
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott once claimed that no one “is the suppository of all wisdom” (i.e., repository).
Texas governor Rick Perry has been known to commonly utter malapropisms. For example, he described states as “lavatories of innovation and democracy” instead of “laboratories.”
If you’ve heard anything about a “peach tree dish,” “gazpacho police,” or something “fragrantly violated,” thank US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Sometimes the terms are a simple misplaced word or tangled tongue. Other times, however, they are the result of people attempting to sound smarter than they are. Those are the ones to watch out for.
In writing, we encounter a lot of words called homophones that drive readers crazy. This term has absolutely nothing to do with sexual preference. Homophones are words that sound the same (or nearly the same) but mean something different.
Let’s start with “here” vs. “hear.” The first is indicative of place. The second is the effect of sound on the ears.
To, two, and too are three words with vastly different meanings but that all sound the same. When seen in writing, however, they can be cringe-worthy. To is a direction. Two is a number. Too means also.
Then we have the classic “there,” “their,” “they’re.” The first is a place, the second is a plural possessive, and the third is a contraction for ‘they are.’ Readers cringe when they see these confused.
In the ‘sounds close’ category, one of the most common substitution I see is then/than. Most of the time I see it, then is substituted for than. “Then” indicates an order of events. “Than” indicates a comparison or preference. There is a vast difference between “I’d rather do dishes than have sex,” vs. “I’d rather do dishes then have sex. Only one of them actually ends in sex.
My editor would not forgive me if I did not address ‘verbing.’ A few weeks ago, I mentioned an author whose breakthrough novel allowed her to quit teaching and start noveling full time. My editor let it pass, but cringed and called it out to me. ‘Noveling’ is a term popularized by National Novel Writing Month meaning the act of writing a novel. It’s not a word. Mea culpa.
I sat in a sales meeting some years ago at which a vice president spent an hour talking about how the company was going to ‘incentivize’ the sales force. This is not a word but was manufactured from the noun ‘incentive.’
Usually, when a person makes a verb out of a noun, there is another perfectly good verb that could be used instead. My own pet peeve over the past few years has been the use of ‘gift’ as a verb. What is the difference between ‘gifted’ and ‘gave?’
That isn’t to say we should never make up new words. Every year, we find new words that have entered our language and finally made it to the dictionary. Merriam-Webster announced that it added 690 new words to the dictionary in September 2023 alone. These included:
rizz noun, slang : romantic appeal or charm
rotoscope verb : to draw or paint over something frame by frame in order to create a matte
rewild verb : to return to a more natural or wild state.
logline noun : a simple synopsis of a screenplay, film, novel, etc. used for pitching
smashburger noun : a hamburger patty that is pressed thin onto a heated pan at the start of cooking
girlboss noun : an ambitious and successful woman
Dictionaries can be fun reading!
Next week, something so new and different that I haven’t thought of what it is yet!