I don’t want to spoil her thunder
Posted: March 21, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: expressions, humor, language, malaphor, malaphors, mixed idioms, spoil the ending, spoil the surprise, steal someone's thunder, words 2 CommentsThe host at a seminar was introducing the speaker and started to go into detail about some of her work. She caught herself and then said this malaphor. It is a mash up of “spoil the surprise (or ending)” (to ruin a surprise or ending by revealing it ahead of time) and “steal {someone’s) thunder” (when someone takes another person’s information or idea and uses it as their own). Spoil and steal are both five letter words starting with s that probably led to the confusion. A shout out to malaphor follower Ian for hearing this one and passing it on!
Another similar expression to ‘spoil the surprise’ is ‘rain on their parade,’ which could also have drawn the speaker’s mind to thunder…
Love these!
Right you are! And thanks for the kind words.