Like “does the Pope shit in the woods?” or “that train has sailed?”

Also, what good examples can you think of?

  • wjrii@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So, lots of examples, but not much on your question about terminology. In looking around a bit, I couldn’t find a single specific term for a malapropism that “sticks,” but you could fairly describe it as a form semantic drift driven by catachresis, thought the latter seems more common in literary criticism or philosophy than in linguistics.

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      catachresis

      Ha! Here you are answering the actual question but nobody cares!

      Amazing. I had never seen this word before.

      • wjrii@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Even then, I can’t quite find a single Linguistics term for this phenomenon, where it becomes a thing of its own or even replaces the original. ‘Eggcorn’ and ‘Malaphor’ seem to be pretty decent casual terms.