Malapropism

A malapropism is "the incorrect use of a word in place of a word with a similar sound," producing "a nonsensical, often humorous utterance." The name is Mrs. Malaprop of Sheridan's The Rivals (1775), whose wrong words sound like the right ones; the name jokes on "malapropos," from the French mal à propos, "poorly placed," and Byron in 1814 was first to use "malaprop" for a speech error. The stock lines are hers: "she's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile," "he is the very pineapple of politeness." Shakespeare's Dogberry lends the synonym Dogberryism.

For the writer the malapropism is comic characterization by diction: one wrong word per scene marks a speaker vain beyond vocabulary, and it stays funny only while the right word stays recoverable. It works by ear where the pun works by wit, and it shares with eye dialect the critic's warning that nonstandard speech on the page can mock its speaker.