Skip to the chase

This one comes courtesy of the classic movie, “Best in Show”.  The Jane Lynch character is talking about how her poodle will easily win and that the Judges should just “skip to the chase” and give her the trophy.  This is a mashup of “skip it” (ignore the matter) and “cut to the chase” (get to the point; get on with it).  As the Christopher Guest mockumentaries were largely ad-libbed, my guess is that this malaphor was not intentionally written.  A big thanks to John Kooser who heard this one and sent it in.

Why don't we skip to the chase here, and just give me the cup.

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He should jump to the chase

Randy Credico uttered this one on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber the other night.  Credico was talking about encouraging Adam Schiff to take the opportunity to meet with Julian Assange, saying “he should jump to the chase…”  This is a mashup of “cut to the chase” (abandon the preliminaries and focus on what is important) and “jump at the chance” (seize the opportunity).  Similar looking and sounding words “Chance” and “chase” probably were the culprits in this jumble.  A big thanks to “Hawkear” Frank King for sharing this one.

If you haven’t already, you need to jump to the chase to buy my malaphor book, “He Smokes Like a Fish and other Malaphors”, available on Amazon for a mere $6.99.  Let’s get to the chase and buy it!

 


Let’s get to the chase

This nice, subtle malaphor was spoken by Patricia “Tan Mom” Krentcil during her guest appearance on The Howard Stern show, talking about her love for Stern Show staff member Sal Governale.  It is a congruent conflation of  “cut to the chase” and “get to the point”, both meaning to abandon the preliminaries and focus on what is important.  A big shout out to Mike “the Malaphor Slayer” Kovacs for hearing this one and passing it on.

Cut to the crux

This classic from the “Master” mixes “cut to the chase” (get to the point) and “crux of the matter” (important point), creating perhaps a better expression as it describes going directly to the important point of a story/problem/issue.   The “Master” was indeed ahead of his time, coining this beauty in 1981.   Interestingly, a google search of this phrase produced over 5,000 results, making it a commonly used malaphor.