Okay folks. Question time!
What's your favourite malapropism?
Today I learned that "spitting image" is a malapropism! But we're not sure if it comes from "spit and image" (from "he's the very spit of..." someone else), or - and I think this makes more sense - *spirit and image*, deformed over time. But so many forms have been used, no one knows for sure!
Other fun ones:
On tender hooks ("tenterhooks")
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but you mean your mother.
What's your favourite?
@MLClark There are some nice ones in Alice in Wonderland. I am fond of the of the Mock Turtle's description of his underwater school agenda: "Reeling and Writhing of course, to begin with . . . and the different branches of arithmetic--ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision.”
I once wrote a poem where I typed "a dark adopted eye" instead of "a dark adapted eye." I kept the original instead of correcting it.
Oh, you've reminded me of a favourite malapropism.
I once got a secondhand copy of Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (poems), and the last owner - a Korean student reading this book for class - had jotted in the margins of the death poem, after Billy's been shot and is contemplating the whole scene, "These are his thoughts in the last minuets of his life."
One typo.
So much added poetry. :)