malapropism

• n. 言葉の誤用、不合理な言葉の誤用。

18世紀の劇作家マラプロップ夫人が、発音間違いやユーモアから、contagious countriesをcontiguous countriesと発音するなど、しばしば同様の間違いを犯したことから。フランス語のtwo buns, bumpkinでも同様の間違いがある。

malapropism

malapropism: [19] English owes the word malapropism to Mrs Malaprop, a character in Richard Sheridan’s play The Rivals 1775 whose grandiloquent impulses led her to use slightly (but ludicrously) the wrong word: amongst the most familiar of her errors are ‘contagious countries’ (for contiguous), ‘a supercilious knowledge in accounts’ (for superficial), and ‘as head-strong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile’. Sheridan based the name on malapropos ‘inappropriate’ [17], an anglicization of French mal à propos, literally ‘badly to the purpose’ (on mal, see MALIGN).
=> malign, propose

malapropism (n.)

1826, from Mrs. Malaprop, character in Sheridan's play "The Rivals" (1775), noted for her ridiculous misuse of large words (such as "contagious countries" for "contiguous countries"), her name coined from malapropos.

1. There is a malapropism in his paper.

彼の文章には誤用された言葉がある。