Like “does the Pope shit in the woods?” or “that train has sailed?”
Also, what good examples can you think of?
Get two birds stoned at once
I use this one regularly
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
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…”
“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.
“Well isn’t that the horse calling the kettle black”
I love this.
Im stealing these.
“I’m lost for words”
I know these as eggcorns thanks to Adam & Joe… https://youtu.be/GyAWSnwBJLA?si=UXqG273L2lOxk05h
“Not the brightest cookie in the crayon box” is an amalgamation of 3 different sayings I’ve been trying to make happen. It won’t happen.
I do it in danish, but we have the idiom here too. I’ll often make up a new one following the not the x y in the z template. E.g. Not the loudest spoon in the forest.
My mom was fond of “Not the brightest egg in the drawer”.
I used to say not the sharpest cookie in the jar
It’s not rocket surgery.
- The grass is always greener in the hand.
- You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t look it in its mouth.
- We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
- Caught with his pants in the cookie jar.
That last one… goddamn, that’s amazing.
We’ll drive off that bridge when we get to it
I can’t believe you got such a simple saying wrong. It’s not rocket surgery.
I need to start using this one, I already use “burn that bridge” fairly often
I like “we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it”
No, the bridge is too well-guarded.
I usually go with “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”
That’s my favorite one to use
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.
I always liked “Hindsight is 50/50”
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”
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.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater else you’ll end up with a wet, critically injured baby.
“I could care less”
You could and you should!
