Malapropism

• "Are you incinerating that I hit him?" (obviously, the person means insinuate, not incinerate).
• "Arabs wear turbines on their heads" (turbines vs turbans. Wearing a turbine on your head would make you an alpha geek).
• Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species.
• He (Jesus) fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times.

Mal"a*prop*ism (?), n. [From Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Sheridan's drama, " The Rivals," who makes amusing blunders in her use of words. See Malapropos.]

A grotesque misuse of a word; a word so used.

© Webster 1913.