Posts Tagged: word misuse

  • A businessman at a desk writing eggcorn in a pad in front of a whiteboard that has "INTENSIVE PURPOSES" and other things written on it

    Eggcorn—a mute point

    There are some mistakes in English that occur because the speaker or writer is trying to make a reference they don’t understand, understandable. These are called eggcorns. The most common one you are likely to have heard is “for all intensive purposes”. It is wrong, of course. The phrase is “for all intents and purposes”. […]

  • Tony Abbott with a speech bubble saying "... the suppository of all knowledge" with a group of incredulous journalists in an image bubble looking at a suppository

    Mr Abbott becomes Mr Malaprop

    In one of my previous posts, Improving your vocabulary using malapropisms, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek passage using as many common malapropisms as I could squeeze into the post. A malapropism is an incorrect word that sounds like the word that should have been used. The post was about choosing your words carefully and I described […]

  • Former Governor Sarah Palin speaking with attendees at the 2021 Young Women's Leadership Summit at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. Palin is famous for using malapropisms. Image by Gage Skidmore

    Improving your vocabulary using MALAPROPISMs

    Improving your vocabulary and word choice will help you properly reticulate [sic] your ideas. I am not incinerating [sic] that any of you lack the consecration [sic] needed to focus on writing good English but I can safely say, without fear of contraception [sic], that poor word choice can reach into all aspects of communications and […]

  • Location of the prostate

    Don’t prostate yourself

    Be careful getting prostate and prostrate mixed up, it is an unfortunate malapropism. The McVitamins website told us (July 2009 now corrected): The prostrate is a small chestnut sized gland located just beneath the urinary bladder No, not quite! This is a very common error. It is now so common that the prostate, the gland surrounding the […]