It’s amazing how long it takes for people to forget. That idea came to mind as I discussed the “Golden Days” of Highlands with a friend who attended college in the ‘60s.
What impressed me the most was her recollection of the old Student Union Building, called the SUB, which should have been called the HUB, as it linked many departments and buildings and was the de facto center of the campus.
Decades ago, the old SUB was supplanted by the Communication Arts Department, and for the last years of my career, I had an office and taught classes there. But this isn’t so much about the building; rather, it’s about interesting people who “lived” there and led some of us to believe they’d become SUB-human.
One such person, Rita, from Santa Fe, could have come straight out of a 1775 play, “The Rivals,” by Richard Sheridan. Here he introduces a Mrs. Malaprop, who fails not only to find the correct word but also appears to seek out the wrong one.
A malapropism, from the French, is simply the use of the wrong word, to great comic effect. Either the word is simply wrong, or is chosen because it sounds like the word we have in mind.
Mrs. Malaprop is credited with “She’s as headstrong as a allegory on the banks of the Nile” (i.e., alligator); and “He is the very pineapple of politeness” (i.e., pinnacle).
But before I’d even heard the term malaprop, Rita managed to sprinkle them into a short conversation. She started by saying, “My friends left me strangled here in the SUBway. You could have knocked me over with a fender.”
Three comical misuses of words in two short sentences. Had my friend Rita ever read Sheridan? I never asked.
The words “strangled,” “SUBway” and “fender” all sound like what Rita must have had in mind, but she missed by a little.
In previous columns, I’ve written about the habit of relying more on hearing than on reading, with the result that often we use the wrong word without knowing it or looking it up.
To be sure, malapropisms make their way, with comic effect, into popular culture. That’s why script writers for The Sopranos inserted, “He was prostate with grief” and “He tried to create a little dysentery among the ranks.” Did they mean “prostrate” and “dissent”?
And a recording that spoofs an infomercial proves that a “little knowledge is a dangerous thing” when it alludes to a well-known poem by Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In this poem, a mariner who shoots an albatross, is doomed to wear the carcass of the bird around his neck.
“Albatross” now has become synonymous with a burden or excessive grief.
The spoof reads, “I’ve got these two albacores around my neck,” and “It’s like the Rime of the Ancient Marinade.”
Headline writers, under deadline pressure, commit their own malapropisms even though the telescopic messages seem perfect at the time.
One newspaper carried the headline: “Iraqi Head Seeks Arms.” Another classic came out this way: “Stiff opposition to casketless funerals.” And there appeared “Babies are what mothers eat,” “Probation Chief Now Jails Boss,” “Partial jury chosen for Tyson trial” and “Jesse Jackson could have altered race, analysts say.”
In 1997, the Optic carried a Wal-Mart ad seeking a “personal manager” who “must be computer illiterate.”
And just this week, did we ever make a typo! In an age of rapid communication, we get spoiled because of the ability to take an e-mail, for example, and convert it to type, almost instantly. Many of the submissions to the Optic come electronically. I can file this column from home, and with just a bit of tweaking at the office, have it set on the page, without the need to hand-carry or retype.
Yet, some submissions don’t arrive electronically. Letters to the Optic editor, for example, often come typed, sent by snail mail, or hand-delivered.
And we also receive hand-written letters whose hieroglpyhics leave us puzzled. Even the most sophisticated penmanship-recognition software struggles with the written script.
So, a human often re-types what’s been submitted in handwritten form. As a recent article in the Optic demonstrates, we modified a hand-written letter, but I contend it was purely a judgment call.
Here’s what happened: A submitted article referred to a local anti-violence group, Somos Familia. “Familia” looked like “Tamales.” Just look at the similarity between the “T” and the “F” as well as the series with “m,” “a” and “l.” We chose the “tamales” version.
Some may have gotten steamed over the boo-boo. Nevertheless, I find it funny, unintentionally funny. It’s the kind of malapropism that appears on the “Headlines” feature on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
But before anybody hollers, “Hire a proofreader!” let me present a positive aspect to our typo:
Why would anybody object to the Tamales reference? It could be that, like the favorite Mexican food treat, some members of the Somos Familia organization got steamed up by this tamale error, as any good tamales would be.
The late Thomas Oliver Mallory once said, “There are few problems that can’t be minimized by the time you reach the bottom of a bowl of green chile.”
Well, I would add to his injunction, “or after one eats some good, well-steamed tamales — husky, corny, beefy or porky.”
Hmmm, that reference is making me hungry. It’s a pity that Rita’s SUBway is no longer in business.