Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Flips of the Tongue, April 2021

It's been about six months since my last post with funny usage examples I've seen or heard.

"We’re going to watch Mpls Crime Sore, watch the businesses leave..." An interweb comment, in case that's not obvious. The police seem to be very sore, maybe people committing crime are sore, but I don't think the crime is sore.

"Keep your head to the grindstone." Said by a friend. Ouch.

"Wiped under the rug." Said by a prosecutor on MSNBC who was talking about Trump's pardons.

"Absorbent amounts of money..." Written by a youngish person, maybe not a native English speaker, in a post about headphones on Medium. (I've seen an image of a dollar bill printed onto sponge material, if that counts.)

"They’ve been in a potato leg race since the beginning..." Said by an expert commentator on MSNBC about COVID vaccines.

"The fantasy that Meet the Press is fine dirt of hollowed ground of journalism..." Written by someone on Twitter. I don't know what "fine dirt" means, and then there's the "hollowed ground," too. Whew.

"Taking the political purse on Twitter." From Twitter, of course.

"Dapple a bit in politics." (I'm not sure what this is from.)

A writer of an opinion piece was described as sounding “calloused.” Again, I'm not sure where I saw this.

"We anticipate that this might be the first domino to drop." From a quote in an AP story about changing the definition of "metropolitan statistical area."

"Dedicated monotonous relationships." From a Facebook post... possibly a joke, but it was written by a person who makes enough typos that it’s hard to tell.

"Marriage is not a full proof strategy to living, having skills and experience." This is from Twitter, and the person wrote the phrase "full proof" twice, so it wasn't a typo.

And finally, the peas-of-resistance, this thread from Twitter. Cory Doctorow, who likes to post mid-century ads and other images, posted this image:

To which another user responded:

"For when you want your partner to have the pallet of an 8 year old."

And another user asked:

"Is that for child-size shipping containers?"

Ah, the classic pallet / palate / palette homonym. It never gets old. What a great language this is.

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Other flips of the tongue posts:

2 comments:

Michael Leddy said...

“Full proof” makes a weird kind of sense — totally convincing, or, if it’s alcohol, full strength, not watered down. But I don’t want to see it catch on.

Daughter Number Three said...

Yes, I suppose "full proof" would qualify as an eggcorn.