malapropism

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: mal=a=prop=ism

CIDE DICTIONARY

malapropism, n. [From Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Sheridan's drama, “ The Rivals,” who makes amusing blunders in her use of words. See Malapropos.].

 A grotesque misuse of a word; a word so used.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

malapropism, n. (also malaprop) the use of a word in mistake for one sounding similar, to comic effect, e.g. allegory for alligator.

Etymology

Mrs Malaprop (f. MALAPROPOS) in Sheridan's The Rivals (1775)

THESAURUS

malapropism

Irish bull, abuse of terms, acrostic, alliteration, allusion, amphibologism, amphiboly, anacoluthon, anadiplosis, anagram, analogy, anaphora, anastrophe, antiphrasis, antithesis, antonomasia, apophasis, aporia, aposiopesis, apostrophe, barbarism, bull, calembour, catachresis, chiasmus, circumlocution, climax, conversion, corruption, ecphonesis, emphasis, equivocality, equivoque, exclamation, fluff, folk etymology, gemination, grammatical error, hypallage, hyperbaton, hyperbole, hypercorrection, hyperform, infelicity, inversion, irony, jeu de mots, litotes, logogram, logogriph, malaprop, marrowsky, meiosis, metagram, metaphor, metonymy, misconstruction, mispronunciation, missaying, misusage, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, palindrome, paregmenon, parenthesis, paronomasia, periphrasis, personification, play on words, pleonasm, preterition, prolepsis, pun, punning, regression, repetition, sarcasm, simile, similitude, solecism, spoonerism, syllepsis, symploce, synecdoche, ungrammaticism, wordplay, zeugma

ROGET THESAURUS

malapropism

Neologism

N neology, neologism, newfangled expression, nonce expression, back-formation, caconym, barbarism, archaism, black letter, monkish Latin, corruption, missaying, malapropism, antiphrasis, pun, paranomasia, play upon words, word play, double- entendre, palindrome, paragram, anagram, clinch, abuse of language, abuse of terms, dialect, brogue, idiom, accent, patois, provincialism, regionalism, localism, broken English, lingua franca, Anglicism, Briticism, Gallicism, Scotticism, Hibernicism, Americanism, Gypsy lingo, Romany, pidgin, pidgin English, pigeon English, Volapuk, Chinook, Esperanto, Hindustani, kitchen Kaffir, dog Latin, macaronics, gibberish, confusion of tongues, Babel, babu English, chi-chi, figure of speech, byword, colloquialism, informal speech, informal language, substandard language, vernacular, vulgar language, obscene language, obscenity, vulgarity, jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot, St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang, pseudology, pseudonym, Mr, So-and-so, wha d'ye call 'em, whatchacallim, what's his name, thingummy, thingumbob, je ne sais quoi, neologist, coiner of words, neologic, neological, archaic, obsolete, colloquial, Anglice.