Mrs Malaprop and the cost of being brilliant...

One of the problems I have noticed with spell-check is that it will sometimes correct your misspelled word with a word that is not at all the word you want.  There is nothing I enjoy more than receiving these in an email; not a collection of them, but the "real" kind when the unsuspecting writer doesn't know that I will forward on to other readers (or re-tell the story) so that they too will have the chance to laugh at the misuse.  You may think this is nasty, but I just can't help it, I think malaproprisms are hysterical for several reasons:

I'm just imaginative/warped enough to take the incorrectly used word and consider what the impact would be if that word were actually the correct word.  I recently read another blog where a blogger commented on loving to read books and enjoying each of the "antidotes"...  so if she didn't really mean "anecdote" and did mean "antidote", what books is she reading?  This is not so much a funny example, but let's start here.

You see, I love to play along...  So when a foreign friend of mine would remark that she was always the Bundt of every joke...  I'd just smile and say that was because she was so sweet and that the jokes really have a hole in them.

Another reason I find them so funny is because they sometimes come along in the most serious of places.  Baloney and I once had a director level who was so self-important that she did not proof read her emails; this was clear.  She was planning to be out on a Friday and (because she was so important) sent an email to alert all her underlings of her impending absence.  Yet, not so important that she didn't proof read the email and sent a message with an incorrect date and reach number.  When this was brought to her attention she sent a follow-up email (which I saved for years and forwarded when we needed a smile).  In this email she gave all the correct information and then apologized for any "incontinence" caused by her first email.  I off course responded, accepting her apology, but noted that it was not the first email which caused the  incontinence, but the second...(yes, we laughed that hard)...

The last reason I find them so funny is, well, I do hate to admit this, but I can't help laughing when I realize just how stupid someone is.  Once I was in a Bible Study group that was lead by different members of the group...  we would take turns and the topics or passages would depend on the member who was leading that night and whatever they wanted to study or talk about.  Well, women love to talk about love and, true to form, one night a member of the group decided she was going to lead a study on the three types of love found in the Bible.  (Stay with me-For those of you who don't know them, they are "eros" where we get the word "erotic", "phileo" which is where the City of Brotherly Love gets it's name, and "agape" used to describe god's love for us.)  For reasons un-known to me this member decided to get to "brotherly love"  last and started her last section with the statement, "there is nothing more wonderful than fellatio love between two Christian brothers".  

I gasped and laughed...

She continued.

I remarked that I didn't think that was actually in the Bible.

She remarked that maybe we didn't read the same Bible because it was mentioned over and over again in the New Testament and then she launched into the remainder of her lesson which was so fraught with double-entendres that I nearly burst...  afterward the other members of the group remarked to me that they were too embarrassed to explain to her the true meaning of her word of choice...  I was not embarrassed, but thoroughly entertained...  Anyone determined to persist in their own stupidity "diverses" what they get... 

-silly