Loading solver...
The mistaken or humorous substitution of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, often producing an absurd or ludicrous semantic effect.
Named after Mrs. Malaprop, a famously pretentious character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 comedy The Rivals. Sheridan coined her name from the French phrase mal à propos ('inappropriate, ill-timed, out of place'). Throughout the play, Mrs. Malaprop prides herself on using grand, ornate vocabulary, but hilariously mangles her Latinate words: she praises someone as 'as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile' (meaning alligator); boasts of her 'geometry' (geography); refers to an 'epidemic' (epigram); and wishes to 'illiterate' (obliterate) past memories. Long before Sheridan, William Shakespeare created celebrated malapropistic characters including Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing (who declared 'our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two aspicious persons').
Test any English word to explore comedic phonetic substitutions and malapropisms:
Verified English words exemplifying malapropism with Scrabble scores
Linguistic definitions, etymological origins, and tournament usage
A malapropism is an absurd or ludicrous mistake where the substituted word makes no sense in context (e.g., 'an allegory on the Nile' for 'alligator'). An eggcorn is a plausible acoustic reinterpretation where the speaker rationalizes the substitution (e.g., 'old-timers disease' for Alzheimer's).