Word: malaprop
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...escape a tyrannical father (only to find that they cannot so easily escape themselves). Puck, we realize, would make a dream host on The Love Connection, and the rude mechanicals, rehearsing "most obscenely and courageously," would surely be an instant hit on prime time. We recognize, too, that the malaprop artists' confusion of "paragon" and "paramour" is not an idle joke; the idealizing of love is as old as broken hearts...
...tried to keep pace by stuffing half of them into their mouths. Seeking to emulate a pioneer woman, Lucy opened an oven to remove freshly baked bread -- and was pinned against the sink by a loaf 8 ft. long. At long last hired for a commercial, she grew increasingly malaprop attempting to pronounce Vitameatavegamin, the 46-proof tonic she was touting, and swigging, at each take...
...badly phrased as this is, in Daley's inimitable style (his most famous malaprop occured during the 1968 Democratic primary, at which Chicago police forcefully attacked student demonstrators, when he said, "The police are not here to create disorder. The police are here to preserve disorder."), this is not a quaint piece of folksy, Midwestern wisdom; this is the heartbeat of politics...
...dreamed of painting the East Room a dusty rose and replacing Nancy's china with simple stoneware. All that stood in their way was George Herbert Walker Bush, a wimp and a preppie, no more presidential than poor Pat Paulsen. But less than four months later, the sometimes goofy, malaprop-prone Republican devastated the Democrats. What went wrong...
...funny men loved their game, but, thank God, they knew it was a game and they didn't take it too seriously. Can you imagine Yogi saying, as the No Lights fanatics do, "It's a bastardization of a baseball tradition." The great Yankee catcher, king of the malaprop, would be more likely to wonder how it happened that the sun could still be shining at 9 p.m. in Wrigley...