The Ostrich Egg: Malapropism Fun: Take One

Whether it be Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing or our very dear, but linguistically challenged President George (Dubyah) Bush - it seems that the trend of attempting to use seemingly erudite vocabulary (or any string of words at all) to try and sound authoritative or a least intelligent, yet ultimately failing miserably, has been around as long as the English language itself. Malapropism, the term for this type of language abuse, is itself an annoyingly and ironically fiendish word ... but hey, when the results make lexicographers and wordnistas laugh in a haughty way, it can't be all that bad. But hey, no one really wants to be the guy making the flagrant linguistic gaffe, like the one below --

Update (Sept 19) -- A nice article through BBC World News addresses the wealth of political gaffes all around the world, in case you want o check out more political blunders: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5360412.stm

So yeah, here are some random words you definitely might not want to confuse, seeing as they regulate not only the salvation of your immortal soul but obscure pop culture and literary references.

Consubstantiation - the assertion that the body and blood of Christ only coexist in and with the substance of the bread and wine of the Eucharist

Transubstantiation - the process by which the bread and wine in the Eucharist literally turn into the body and blood of Christ

Transmogrification - that /other/ magical process by which Hermione turns into a cat

Anthropomorphization - your standard 10th grade literary analysis buzz word, through which one defines the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, forces of nature, the unseen author of things, and others ... like God, who apparently has a long white beard

Animorphs - a process by which preteens of the 90s turned into total geeks

Archetype - the underlying tenet of Carl Jung's theory which surmised that we're all tapped into a collective unconscious, which at it's core spawns the same trite storylines for fantasy/adventure novels whereby the characters are basically interchangeable. Like ... [Neo the intrepid young hacker] finds the guidance of a wise mentor named [Gandalf] to defeat a looming villain named [Lord Voldemort] by using [The Force] to ultimately triumph in the battle of [good] verus [bears]

Yeah, I think that's a good start - maybe I'll bring in some more installments later on - because, Thesauruses ... Thesaurii ... MAKE LANGUAGE FUN - Yeah! And in all honesy, who dosen't love a well placed Shakespeare reference?