May I present Mrs. Malaprop and the Rev. Spooner?

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The queer old dean

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President George W. Bush takes a lot of heat for his verbal gaffes, like "Hispanically" and "misunderestimate." But the truth be told, malapropisms know neither political nor linguistic boundaries.

Last January, French Socialist Segolene Royal referred to "bravery" in a presidential campaign speech. The Socialist candidate used the pseudo-word bravitude instead of the correct bravoure. In English, Madame Royal's unfortunate utterance reads:

"As the Chinese say, one who has not gone to the Great Wall is not brave. One who goes to the Great Wall conquers braveness (bravitude)."

The blunder probably didn't cost Royal the election, but it didn't help her unsuccessful race against the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy. [1]

A. F. Scott defined "malapropism" as "the ridiculous misuse of words in speech or writing, caused by the replacing of one word for another, similar in sound but different in meaning." [2] The term is named for the character of Mrs. Malaprop, in Richard Sheridan's play, The Rivals (1775). "If I reprehend anything in this world," she said, "it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!"

Mrs. Malaprop had two forebears. She is a direct descendent of Mrs. Winifred Jenkins in Tobias Smollett's novel, Humphrey Clinker (1771). Further removed was the character of Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing, who says "It shall be suffigance" and "Comparisons are odorous."

In the same league (or lame seague) was the Rev. W. A. Spooner, not a literary character but the living and breathing dean (1876-1889) and warden (1903-1924) of New College, Oxford University. Spooner's unintentional transpositions of the initial letters of words or phrases are now known as "spoonerisms." A famous example from the warden himself was "the queer old dean" instead of "the dear old queen."

The linguistic phenomenon of metathesis (Greek for "transposition, placing across") is similar to spoonerisms. Tom McArthur [4] defined "metathesis" as "the transposition of two elements of language, usually two sounds and/or letters of a word." It was thus that Old English "bridd" became our modern word, "bird", and Middle English "Manisk" changed to "Manx." By the same token, the spoken variant "aks" is the metathesized form of standard English "ask."

David Crystal  [5] cited "slandaz," a Caribbean transposition of "sandals." According to the Petit Robert dictionary, French "fromage" (cheese) is another case of metathesis (like Italian "formaggio," it comes from popular Latin "formaticum," "something made in a mould"). The more recent French word, "formage," means "an operation that gives its form to a manufactured object."

"Car Pool Tunnel Syndrome" for "Carpal Tunnel Syndrome" [8] and "Donkey Hotay" for "Don Quixote" [7] fall into a third category, namely "mondegreens." Mondegreens are defined by Dictionary.com as  "a series of words that result from the mishearing or misinterpretation of a statement or song lyric. For example, "I led the pigeons to the flag' for 'I pledge allegiance to the flag.'" The term comes from "(Lady) Mondegreen" and a misreading of the line "(hae laid) him on the green" from the song "The Bonny Earl of Murray".

Jon Carroll  [8]  gave some other mondegreens, like Ekaterina Gordeeva's book, "My Sergei: A Love Story," retitled as "Mice Are Gay: A Love Story" and rock group Cream's song "Tales of Brave Ulysses" warped into "Tails of Gravy Lizards."

Two other examples: "Son of a gun, we'll have great fun on the bayou" (from Hank Williams' "Jambalayah") mangled as "Son of a gun, we'll have great fun on the bio," and the Cranberies' song title "I'm Free to Decide" has ended up as "I'm Freakin' Inside" and "I'm Frigid Inside."

Sources Cited:

[1] Ganley, Elaine [Associated Press]."French Candidate Bashed for 'Bravitude'." January 8, 2007.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/01/08/french_candidate_bashed_for_bravitude/. Accessed on September 3, 2007.
[2] Scott, A. F. Current Literary Terms: A Concise Dictionary. [S.l.: St. Martin's, 1971.
[3] Shipley, Joseph Twadell. Dictionary of World Literary Terms. Boston,Writer, [1970].
[4] McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
[5] Crystal, David. Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
[6] Harden, Greg. Submission to Thomson Gale "Funny You Should Ask" website, http://gale.com/enewsletters/archive.htm .
[7] Mondegreen shared by the author's colleague: the woman's son had said this over the breakfast table in February 2006.
[8] Carroll, Jon. ""Mystery Mondegreens and So Much More." San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 1997
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1997/04/15/DD62700.DTL. Accessed on September 3, 2007.