Misnomers, Misconceptions, Oxymorons and Malapropisms

I was writing something about misconceptions this week, which got me thinking about interesting words about words. I'm pretty sure most of us learned all these words in school, so this should just be considered a refresher course.

A misnomer is a name or term that is inaccurate, misleading, or wrongly applied to a person, place, thing, or concept. It occurs when a word's literal meaning contradicts the actual reality of what it describes. Here are some examples:

"Lead" pencil: A pencil's core is actually made of graphite and clay, not lead.
"Tin" foil: Modern kitchen foil is made entirely of aluminum.
Koala "bear": Koalas are marsupials, completely unrelated to bears.
"French" fries: This style of fried potato actually originated in California. (Just kidding. Belgium.)
"Guinea" pigs: These are rodents native to the Andes, not Guinea, and you probably already know they are not pigs.

I wanted to highlight misnomers because we seem to have become inundated with them. For example, if a gathering involves widespread violence, looting and property destruction, calling it a "peaceful protest" becomes a political misnomer. Conversely, critics might use a misnomer like "riot" to describe a completely orderly march to alter public perception.

In the realm of ethics we see a different kind of language abuse. Calling a natural disaster like an earthquake "evil" is often considered a conceptual misnomer in secular philosophy. Because an earthquake has no mind, intent, or moral agency, it can be "bad" or "destructive," but it cannot be morally "evil."

Misnomers are not precisely the same as misconceptions or oxymorons. A misnomer happens when a name is completely inaccurate to the physical reality of the object. The object is real, but the language used to name it is factually incorrect so it's actually the wrong label.

Here's another example: a jellyfish is not a fish, it's an invertebrate. And guess what? Panama hats are originally from Ecuador, not Panama. Again, these are misnomers.

A misconception on the other hand is a false premise, a myth, or a flawed conclusion that people widely hold to be true. It lives in the human mind rather than just the dictionary definition. We've all heard this one cited so often it's repeated as if it were true: "Humans only use 10% of their brains." Neurological imaging shows we use virtually every part of our brain over the course of a day.

Another "old wives' tale" (and I mean no disrespect to older wives here) is that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. Medical studies have consistently shown no link; the sound is just gas bubbles bursting in the joint fluid, so it is a misconception.

Oxymorons are the fun one in this batch. An oxymoron is a deliberate pairing of two contradictory or opposing terms to create a poetic effect, add emphasis, or point out a paradox. It is a stylistic choice, not an error. Example: "Deafening silence." There is no such thing as a deafening silence. Silence cannot literally deafen you. Maybe it rings true because it highlights a stillness so intense that it feels heavy. I dunno. "Liquid gas" is another oxymoron. Matter generally exists as one or the other, but the phrase describes a substance (like propane) that's been pressurized into a liquid state.

In 2019 I wrote a blog post titled Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom for People Who Enjoy Word Play. It's a book review with plenty of exampes as well as a link to the book itself. 

The last word on this list also illustrates the humorous side of language. A malapropism is the accidental or comedic misuse of a word by replacing it with a similar-sounding word that has a completely different meaning. A number of Comedians like the Marx Brothers routinely used word play. Whereas Groucho was famous for puns and double entendres, Chico carried the water when it came to malapropisms, playing a character who seems to misunderstand English. When asked where he was from, he'd reply in a thick Italian accent that he was "from across the Atlantic Auction." 

I first became aware of malapropisms when our family moved to New Jersey. The Bowery Boys were a staple of New York television in 1964. and Leo Gorcey played a character named Slip Mahoney famously butchered the English language, talking about "optical delusions" and "I  depreciate it" (instead of appreciate). He tried to sound smart by using big words. 

And who can forget Archie Bunker's colorful mistake-laden language. "Patience is a virgin," he once said, intending to say virtue. Or "What do I look like, an inferior decorator."

The origin of the word actually comes from a character in an 18th century play called The Rivals, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. One of the characters was Mrs. Malaprop who was full of 'em. One of her lines: "She's as headstrong as an allegory on tbe banks of the Nile."

All that to say language can be fun. Whether it's verbal sleight of hand or aural misdirection, it's magical when it works.