malapropism.
The blundering use of an absurdly inappropriate word or expression in place of a similar-sounding one.
Meaning & usage
The blundering use of an absurdly inappropriate word or expression in place of a similar-sounding one.
The script employed malapropism to great effect.
An instance of such use.
The translator matched every malapropism in the original with one from his own language.
The humor comes from all the malapropisms.
Where this word comes from
From the name of Mrs. Malaprop, a character in the play The Rivals (1775) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan + -ism. As dramatic characters in English comic plays of this time often had allusive names, it is likely that Sheridan fashioned the name from malapropos (“inappropriate; inappropriately”), from French mal à propos. Mrs. Malaprop is a classic example of a familiar comedic character archetype who unintentionally substitutes inappropriate but like-sounding words that take on a ludicrous meaning when used incorrectly.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.