People Making Slips Alcoholics Suppository Things Speaker Words

Anyone who has done any "public speaking" (the practice of making presentations and speaking in front of groups of people) is familiar with "gaffes" (mistakes that cause embarrassment). In addition to Freudian slips and other slips of the tongue, public speakers have to "beware of" (be careful or cautious regarding) "malapropisms" and "spoonerisms."

A "malapropism" is the use of the wrong word, accidentally replacing the desired word with one that has a similar sound, often with "humorous" (funny; making people laugh) results. For example, the former mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, once referred to "Alcoholics Anonymous" (an organization that helps people recover from an addiction to alcohol) as "Alcoholics Unanimous," where "unanimous" refers to a situation where all people agree on something. A more embarrassing example of a malapropism was reported in New Scientist magazine, which stated that someone described a co-worker as a "suppository" of information (a "suppository" is a medicine that is placed inside one's body) instead of a "repository" (a place where things are stored) of information.

A "spoonerism" occurs when the speaker "switches" (changes; mixes) the sounds in two words in a phrase. For example, a spoonerism of "tons of soil" (meaning a lot of dirt) would be "sons of toil" (or the sons of hard, physical labor).

Finally, even if the speaker "gets things right" (does something correctly), sometimes the members of the audience mishear the phrase. These "instances" (moments when this occurs) are known as "mondegreens." One example is from the "lyrics" (the words sung in a song) to a song called Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. The "actual" (real) lyrics are "Excuse me while I kiss this guy," but many people hear it as "Excuse me while I kiss the sky," an example of a mondegreen.