It’s Wednesday and time for me to show you some the new (to-me) words I found. My new words were on the blogs of two of my favorite bloggers. Here’s what I found:
1. From Jill at Rhapsody In Books, I found paroxysm.
My husband was in the middle seat, with nowhere to shrink from his embarrassment as I banged on the seat in paroxysms of hysteria, shoving the book at him and saying over and over, “Oh, read this page, just one more, you have to read this!”…
Paroxysm is a sudden attack or violent expression of a particular emotion or activity.
If you think that quote is funny, click the blog title and read the entire post. Jill is a superb writer.
2. From Kathy at Bermuda Onion’s Weblog, I found malapropism.
Professor Anders Henriksson has been teaching history at Shepherd University for close to forty years and has been collecting “malapropisms, blunders and skewed associations” that college students have provided on tests.
Malapropism is a the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with unintentionally amusing effect.
In the days when I worked in Human Resources we also had our share of malapropisms, although we didn’t call them that. We just called them weirdos and they usually occurred on job applications. One I remember was on the section where it asks Sex: M or F. This guy responded: ”SMTWTFS – every day I can get it.” I’m not sure that exactly fits the definition of malapropism but you get the idea.
Join me again next Wednesday to what I find in this week’s reading. More new words can be found every Wednesday at Kathy’s blog as she is the sponsor of Wondrous Words Wednesday.
Jill and Kathy are two of my favorite bloggers; always come up with something interesting and their personalities and sense of humor just click with me.
Thank you! And I love your joke – I don’t know if it qualifies either but who cares?!!! (It reminds me to of the “soup or sex” joke…
How fun that you used others blog posts for your Wednesday words today! What a funny story about what the guy put on the application! Still laughing!
Paroxysm…makes me think of hysterically laughing at something, yet trying not to be so obvious!!
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I love that you found words on other blogs. Isn’t blogging a fun thing to do? And we learn so much from each other. Thanks for sharing these two.
Love how you incorporated words from other bloggers!!!
I love your malapropism! I actually knew that word before my post because there’s a very well known bookstore in our part of the country called Malaprop’s. Thanks for playing along, Margot!
I love these words! I have been known to suffer from a paroxysm or twenty in my time, lol. I have a post here if you’re interested.