classical malapropism / mishearing

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jul 20 14:30:37 UTC 2009


Sounds like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004, Jim Carrey,
Kate Winslet). "A couple undergo a procedure to erase each other from
their memories when their relationship turns sour, but it is only
through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin
with."

m a m

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 9:19 AM, Arnold Zwicky<zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> from Michael Quinion's World Wide Words #648 Â 7/18/09:
>
> Â  On 13 July, Kenneth Huey found this sentence in the Huffington Post
> in a piece on steroids in sport: "Knowing his erasable personality, Ty
> would most likely be a perfect example of 'roid-rage'." Having your
> personality erased would surely make anybody angry.
>
> as far as i can see, the irascible/erasable relationship is entirely
> phonological, so this is either a classical malapropism or a
> mishearing (or has contributions from each).

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