Use your indoor words
Posted: July 22, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: expressions, humor, language, malaphor, use your indoor voice, use your wordsh, words 3 CommentsA mom was overheard saying to her rambunctious child, who was over-excited and talking too loudly in public: “use your indoor words.” This is a mashup of “use your words” (tell me with words what you want, rather than whining and crying) and “use your indoor voice” (speak more quietly). “Use your” is the common denominator here, and the cause of the mixup. A big thanks to Verbatim for passing this one along!
Malaphors 
Not sure this is a malaphor, but the New Bedford Standard Times reported that a defeated football team was “licking its wombs.”
Beth, that’s a malaprop (wrong use of a word, usually that sounds similar), not a malaphor, but definitely a good one!
It was too good not to share. I wondered whether they were combining “licking their wounds” with “going back to the womb”–both avoidance mechanisms.