Self-defecating Humor

I’m a little strange. This should come as no surprise to many of you denizens of the Realm. But one of my quirks is analyzing humor. It isn’t enough to me that something is funny; I want to understand why it is funny.

Through this analysis, I have found that at least to me the malaprop, when discovered in the wild, is one of the more consistently funny forms of humor.

What is a malaprop? A malaprop derives its name from Mrs. Malaprop, a dimwitted character from Richard Sheridan’s comedy, The Rivals and describes an instance where the speaker through ignorance or a slip of tongue substitutes a similar-sounding word for the one intended. Fun with Words.com has a further description and some examples on their page. Sports figures and politicians are notorious for malaprops, but hearing one live is even better.

The title of this post is an example of a malaprop that a coworker, an older gentleman nearing retirement, used to explain why he spoke ill of himself in conversation. After regaining my composure, I politely suggested that perhaps that wasn’t quite what he had meant to say.

On another occasion, I had a boss, who was quite notorious for mixing metaphors and cliché’s anyway (he regularly put his ear and many other body parts, save his nose, to the grindstone) instruct during a meeting that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to reach him, as he would be incognito… all day.

I also had another friend explain the layout of his house to me as having a large "a grape" room rather than a den and living room combination. It was funny to me, but because he had only ever heard someone speak of having a great room in their home and had never seen it written, he didn’t understand why.

I know humor is subjunctive, and I hope if you don’t find my altitude about people who occasionally misspeak to be self-impotent and off-putting that you’ll share your own detestable morsels with me. But if you do find me a cat, I guess we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Malaprops