In Richard Sheridan's 1775 comedic play The Rivals, Mrs. Malaprop is a bombastic character who often ludicrously misuses words, and it is from her name that the English noun malapropism evolved. Sheridan based the character's name on the word malapropos, an adjective meaning “inappropriate” or “inopportune” that has been around since the mid-seventeenth century and is itself an Anglicized borrowing of the French phrase mal à propos, which means “bad for the purpose.” As for the coining of malapropism—the definition of which is, of course, “the mistaken and often humorous use of a word or phrase in place of a similar-sounding one, or a word or phrase so misused”—etymologists and lexicographers agree on neither when the deed occurred nor who should get the credit, though many do believe the word's first printed appearance was in Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley in 1849.
©2019 Michael R. Gates
