And now for something light: six months' worth of Flips of the Tongue.
As I heard or read these, I tried to record their context, but I wasn't always successful in remembering it or having time to note it.
In a Twitter conversation about the New York Times 1619 Project, one commenter referred to it as seminole work. I'm sure this would come as a surprise to both the Seminole and the creators of the project.
I'm not sure what story or comment thread this is from, but it was probably people talking about the January 6 attempt to overthrow the election: "As soon as the right wing shows up, the police use kiddy gloves."
"We had to read The Bluesy Eye." (In a conversation about lists of books required in high school English.)
Fully fledged out. (I have no idea what that phrase came from, but it clearly was supposed to be "fully fleshed out.")
From a negative Twitter description: Blind and deft. This is an odd turnaround from the usual phrase, but I like the rebalancing it unintentionally implies.
From a Twitter conversation about the benefits of dying alone vs. not, a person used malingering when they meant lingering: “a fear of malingering alone.”
"...they should charge a rate commiserate..." (when commensurate was meant).
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Other flips of the tongue posts:
4 comments:
Usually I can figure out what the "tongue flipper" actually meant, but I am stumped by "ball rush" and "The Bluesy Eye." Any hints?
For ball rush, it was supposed to be bull rush... like a stampede of bulls, but it's also applied to football players these days, it looks like (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bull+rush). Not a bulrush, as in where Moses was found, or the bum's rush. Gee, we sure have a lot of expressions about rushes, don't we?
The Bluesy Eye was supposed to be The Bluest Eye (by Toni Morrison).
TIL -- thank you!
These are weird and great, and unlike the things kids have allegedly written in their homework, I know they’re real.
I can imagine “fledged out,” like the misused “fulsome,” catching on. Yikes!
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