www.alphadictionary.com

Willie Lamont, in the Hamish Macbeth series:

I don’t want to purvey the course of justice.

She’s adulterated.

Isn’t this awful weather? They say there’s more perception forecast for the morrow.


Here’s Samoa. Not all malapropisms, actually . . . .

I took a correspending course in the psychotry.

. . . but I have a cliché of friends in Strathbane.

She lives in a condom in San Francisco.

I must say, it is refreshing to meet the woman these days who disnae (Scots vernacular) go in for all this fenimist rubbish.

You wanted all the kludos for yourself.

I love malapropisms and look forward to the promised additions. There was an American comedian who rose to fame on malapropisms. I loved him but haven't seen him around for a quarter of a century or thereabouts.

Thank you. There’s a partial list of the good lady’s efforts in “The Rivals” on the internet, but I’m sure you’re well-acquainted with our eponym.

Now I think of it, there was a terrific British show I used to see on PBS:
The Two Ronnies, very verbal-based. Lots of their stuff can be seen on YouTube. More grownup than most of the other UK comedy shows, I always thought.

Some of mine:

He was awarded a medal for meretricious behaviour.

We have a moral oblation to give to the poor.

The longest side of a rectangular triangle is called the hyperbole.

I don't believe in spectra – I'm not supercilious.

It takes a lot of effort to exercise demons.

We need someone to meditate in the industrial dispute.

Contemplating the vastness of the universe is a humiliating experience.

The referee's role is arbitrary.

Tchaikovsky's Cappuccino Italien should be played molto espresso.

I don't care whether you called him a 'queen' or a 'quean' – homophonic abuse will not be tolerated.

Another wrinkle: what might be called inverse malapropisms.

This song, A Word a Day, from Johnny Mercer’s Top Banana, (Broadway, 1951),
sung by Phil Silvers and Rose Marie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyLyiVD7C0c

I am sure I did not mean to be obstructive. (For ‘obtrusive’)

It’s your reputation for philately that puts the women off.


Willie has been disappointingly scarce in the last couple of the books I’ve read in this series, but here’s evidence in support of my nomination of Marion Chesney for ‘Ms. Aprop’: her wonderful, fitting chapter headers.

Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!
— Edward Fitzgerald [from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam]

Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding-ring!
— Colley Cibber

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek.
—Sir Thomas Wyatt

It doesn’t much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find next morning that it was someone else.
—Samuel Rogers


y más . . . .

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.
—John Keats



N.B. Edit to original post added some material.