Like “does the Pope shit in the woods?” or “that train has sailed?”
Also, what good examples can you think of?
My buddy and I have a whole list of these…I started calling them masonism’s because he messes them up so often lol
“I don’t give a shit if he wrote the Mona Lisa!”
“I’m not attached to my hip!”
“I’m taking my own life…into my own hands!”
“How’s that for apples?”
“There’s not enough meat to play with”
“That’s a hit…and a miss!”
“If it weighs anything to you….”
“Jesus Christ! That’s slave robbery!
“Welp, I’m going to get hard at work”
“I’m making shit up out of my ass.”
“He was flopping back and forth” (flip flopping)
“I’m going to go tell this kid a piece of my mind…”
“Oh, here you go….you’re going to piss on my parade!”
“Don’t count your chickens before they turn into eggs.”
“Well isn’t that the horse calling the kettle black”
“Does a fat kid shit in the woods?”
“I can sleep through a rock!”
Ibanez AZ series guitars? Yea I know them like they’re in the back of my hand…”
“There’s a lot of onions to that…”
“I’m pulling it off my head”
“Knock the balls off!
-knock it out of the park/socks off
“That’s a double sided sword!”
“You can’t lead a horse to fish…”
“Well isn’t that the horse calling the kettle black”
I love this.
Im stealing these.
“Welp, I’m going to get hard at work”
Umm… Yeah, that TOTALLY never actually happens to me either.
I can’t get hard at work because there’s not enough meat to play with =/
There’s not enough meat to play with because I can’t get hard at work!
Ahh! It’s a Catch 22!
I say “Same Difference” often and people hate it.
How the hell should I know, I’m not a rocket surgeon
Now, that one does have its place. I either it in an ironic sense that you dont need multiple degrees to do something. The flip side is that the people we send to space tend to be the most qualified people in multiple fields, a medical surgeon with a stem degree does not sound too far outside the realm of reason.
“I could care less”
You could and you should!
Get two birds stoned at once
I like, “get two birds stoned with one bush” as some bastard amalgamation of “kill two birds with one stone” and “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”
Two stones with one bird
I use this one regularly
It’s not rocket surgery.
One of my standbys is “that horse has sailed”.
I’m running around like a chicken with its legs cut off.
Reminds me of my friend once saying that “the discussion leads nowhere. It’s like the snake biting its tongue”
“I’m lost for words”
People in glass houses shouldn’t get stoned
I always liked “Hindsight is 50/50”
I thought “cakewalk” was a clever American amalgamation of “a piece of cake” and “a walk in the park”.
Turns out it’s actually related to slavery, so probably doesn’t count.
So, lots of examples, but not much on your question about terminology. In looking around a bit, I couldn’t find a single specific term for a malapropism that “sticks,” but you could fairly describe it as a form semantic drift driven by catachresis, thought the latter seems more common in literary criticism or philosophy than in linguistics.
catachresis
Ha! Here you are answering the actual question but nobody cares!
Amazing. I had never seen this word before.
Even then, I can’t quite find a single Linguistics term for this phenomenon, where it becomes a thing of its own or even replaces the original. ‘Eggcorn’ and ‘Malaphor’ seem to be pretty decent casual terms.
Almost thought you’d done one yourself there with this “even then”! But I was thinking of even still (from even so). Which BTW is probably in my top 3 most hated malaphors or catachreses or whatever they are.
I know these as eggcorns thanks to Adam & Joe… https://youtu.be/GyAWSnwBJLA?si=UXqG273L2lOxk05h
deleted by creator
That’s a good one, “deleted by creator”
