Nigerian malaproppery

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 28, 2004, at 6:22 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> Mark Mandel writes:
>> Usually it takes me considerably less than a second to recognize a
>> Nigerian
>> scam spam letter and delete it, assuming I have not already deleted
>> it from
>> the subject line index. But a word in the first paragraph of this one
>> caught
>> my attention and I thought it was worth sharing with the rest of you
>> word
>> freaks.
>
> Well, epigrammatic in that the illness was brief (if not downright
> pithy)?

>> ... He died after an epigrammatic illness that lasted for
>> only four days...

as so often happens, a malaprop has induced the tip-of-the-tongue state
in me.  help!  what was the writer aiming at with "epigrammatic"?
"epidemic"?  "dramatic"?  what?

arnold