Nigerian malaproppery

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:31 AM -0700 8/29/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>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?
>
I'm guessing "epidemic".

L