Friday, September 24, 2004

Mounds of rotten steak

Recently I stumbled across a new word that described perfectly a grammatical situation of which I'd been aware for some time but which I had no idea had a word to describe it: Hypallage. This happens when an adjective is incorrectly applied to the object instead of the subject of a sentence (or maybe the other way around), often deliberately for rhetorical or dramatic impact, but also unintentionally from sloppy speech. P.G. Wodehouse was a master of the deliberate use, as in 'I dabbled a reluctant toe in the water.' This delightful discovery of a whole word to describe a concept which bears proper attention in its own right reminded me of another situation that has its own word to describe it, only I can't remember the word, and I'd be much obliged to the helpful soul who can point it out to me. It's the Mad Gabs scenario, when a certain phrase is mistaken for something completely different because the syllables sound enough alike. For instance, Michael says that for years he couldn't figure out why the Beach Boys were singing about mounds of rotten steak (Monserrat mystique). What is this word? It's driving me mad.

And by the way, BlogSpot's spellcheck has a VERY limited vocabulary.

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