Malaphors, aka idiom blends
Posted: April 8, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized 3 CommentsExcellent discussion of malaphors on “Arnold Zwicky’s Blog” by Arnold Zwicky, Stanford Professor of Linguistics.
From Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, a link to a Malaphors site, featuring
Unintentional blended idioms and phrases – It’s the cream of the cake!
The site (managed by someone who identifies himself only as Davemalaphor) keeps a running inventory of “malaphors” — the term came to the site’s compiler from Douglas Hofstadter (1989), who got it from a 1976 newspaper article; Hofstadter also cites Gerald Cohen’s work on “syntactic blends” (generally, not specifically those involving idioms).
[Recent items on the Malaphor site: He’s a black horse in all of this (dark horse + black sheep); The client is one of those hard-moving targets (hard to hit + moving target); I’m going to give him a taste of my mind! (a piece of my mind + a taste of his own medicine).]
In a separate development, inspired by postings on “idiom blends” in Language Log…
View original post 700 more words
Davemalaphor, you have been outed!
Wow.
Sent from my iPad
you’re on the map, Your Daveness..