MalapropismWord for the Wise October 30, 2006 Broadcast Topic: Malapropism Today we tip our linguistic hat to Irish dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan, born on this date in seventeen-fifty-one.
Sheridan is the most famous literary member of a famed family that includes Governors General of Canada, authors, and society beauties.
(来源：遥英语学习网站 http://www.
2hzz.
com)Richard Sheridan is quoted at more than half a dozen places in the Unabridged Dictionary, ranging from the now-obsolete adoors (meaning at the door) to the lively jest meaning laughingstock.
But Sheridan is remembered by wordlovers for creating Mrs.
Malaprop, a character in his comedy The Rivals.
Mrs.
Malaprop ?
and yes, that name does evoke mal-appropriate, doesn't it?
-- misspoke herself to gales of laughter, so much so that the word malapropism came to refer to a usually humorous misapplication of a word or phrase; or, more specifically, to the blundering use of a word that sounds somewhat like the one intended but is usually ludicrously wrong in the context.
For example, Mrs.
Malaprop herself declared one fellow to be.
.
.
the very pineapple of politeness where most people would have chosen the word pinnacle.
We'll end with an original, mind-spinning malapropism from the lady herself: If I reprehend anything in this world, she declared, it is the use of my oracular tongue and a nice derangement of epitaphs.