Word of the week

Malaphor - (rare) an idiom blend: an error in which two similar figures of speech are merged, producing an often nonsensical result.

The portmanteau word is a result of blending malapropism and metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn't literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison. You may remember learning at school in English class that a a simile states that one thing is like another thing, whereas a metaphor states that one thing is another thing. It equates two things not because they are actually the same but for the sake of comparison, symbolism, and higher marks in your third form poetry exercise. If you take the metaphor literally, it will sound pretty odd - or are there really any literal black sheep in your family?

The word malapropism (and its earlier form, malaprop) comes from the character Mrs Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals. She frequently misspeaks to comic effect by using words which do not have the meaning she intends but which similar to those that do. For example, she says, "illiterate him from your memory" (instead of obliterate), "he is the very pineapple of politeness" (instead of pinnacle), and "she's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile" (instead of alligator). 

Sheridan chose her name in reference to the word malapropos, an adjective or adverb meaning inappropriate or inappropriately derived from the French phrase mal à propos (literally poorly placed). According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first recorded use of malapropos in English is from 1630, and the first person known to have used the word malaprop specifically in the sense of a speech error is Lord Byron in 1814.

Of course malapropisms appeared in many works before Sheridan created the character of Mrs Malaprop. William Shakespeare used them in a number of his plays, almost invariably spoken by comic ill-educated lower-class characters, such as Mistress Quickly (Henry IV parts 1 & 2; Henry V; Merry Wives of Windsor) and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. Mistress Quickly states at one point that Falstaff has been indicted to dinner when she means invited, and I believe she also substitutes the word erection for direction, but I wasn't game to look it up on Google as a search for Mistress Quickly erection is at best blocked by a firewall and at worst likely to corrupt my computer and send pornographic images to all my contacts.

Dogberry from Much Ado about Nothing as depicted by Henry Stacy Marks (1853)

Dogberry asks "the learned writer to set down our excommunication" (instead of communication), "Dost thou not suspect my place? Does thou not suspect my years?" (instead of respect), "Our watch, my lord, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons" (instead of apprehended and suspicious), and "thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this" (instead of condemnation). There is a term 'Dogberryism', but although Shakespeare was an earlier writer than Sheridan (Much Ado About Nothing is from 1598), 'malapropism' is an earlier coinage than 'Dogberryism', which is not attested until 1836.

Anyway, back to malaphors (also known as idiom blends) - here are some of my favourites:

• I'll burn that bridge when I get to it
• A bird in the hand catches the worm
• That's a whole new kettle of worms
• You hit the nail right on the nose
• I can read him like the back of my book
• She's going to hell in a handbag
• A stitch in time saves an arm and a leg
• She stuck her neck out on a limb
• You can't see the wood for the haystack
• Does the pope shit in the woods?

Only Connect

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

(Hamish Hamilton)

Pp. 371

This ambitious novel twists strands of tales together like the DNA double helix molecule that symbolises the story. The first half concerns Francesco del Cossa in an out of body experience – she may be dead, but she doesn’t remember dying; perhaps this is purgatory? She is drawn to a girl who is looking at her painting in an art gallery. The second half concerns George, the girl from the gallery, trying to cope with the death of her mother, Carol, who became obsessed with the unknown painter of frescoes in Ferrara, Italy and took her daughter there to see them in situ.

The halves of the novel are both numbered One; half of the books are printed with George’s story first and Francesco’s second. They can be read in either order because everything is connected, and all things overlap. Sitting in an Italian piazza and discussing the prevalence of over-painting images, George’s mother asks her, “Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The picture underneath or the picture on the surface?” George says the picture underneath, of course. “But the first thing we see, her mother said, and most times the only thing we see, is the one on the surface. So does that mean it comes first after all? And does that mean the other picture, if we don’t know about it, may as well not exist?”

These palimpsests become a metaphor for life. Francesco is really a girl, but disguised as a boy so that she can have a career as an artist. Pictures record things past their death; they capture immortality. Carol was an art activist, “It was her job to subvert political things with art things, and to subvert art things with political things.”

After her mother’s death, George feels as though her life has been split into two entirely separate halves. “That before and after thing is about mourning, is what people keep saying.” She discovers a woman with whom Carol had a relationship, and George stalks and photographs her every day. She recalls how her mother used to think she was being spied upon and ‘Minotaur-ed’; was she just being paranoid? Or is this the self-enveloping effect of time’s continuum? Both art and surveillance involve watching and being watched, and there is always more going on than meets the eye. Carol taught George, “Nothing’s not connected. And we don’t live on a flat surface.” History is ever-present and the weight of all this connectivity can be oppressive.

The novel is a complex work of meaning and metaphor: a classic story of love and loss, told in a fresh and modern way. Both genre and gender bending, this is a work of parallel universes, palimpsests, fluid time and space, paranoia and mystery – almost too clever by half, and certainly challenging, but definitely memorable.