Linguistic Lapses: Hilarious Historical Malaprops, Eggcorns, Spoonerisms and Puns

The following allegedly originate from essays written by
high school history students.. These have been around since pre-Internet days, but still amuse

Warning: Avoid hot liquids while reading these pages…..  

 Egypt

Imaginary ancient Egyptian papyrus of Horus from the Book of the Dead  - original CGI illustration
Imaginary ancient Egyptian papyrus of Horus from the Book of the Dead – original CGI illustration
https://steve-estvanik.pixels.com/art/egypt

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and travelled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.


Bible Tales

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of the children, Cain, asked ” Am I my brother’s son?” God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother’s birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
Genesis allegory – A female god with long black hair creatingadam from a pool of water – – imaginary – ai generative
https://steve-estvanik.pixels.com/art/genesis
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David’s sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to the others before they do one to you. He also explained, ‘ a man doth not live by sweat alone.’ The people who followed the Lord were called his 12 decibels. The epistles were the wives of the apostles. One of the opossums was St. Matthew who was also a taximan. It was a miracle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tombstone off the entrance.

St. Paul cavorted to Christianity. He preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage. A Christian should have only one spouse. This is called monotony.

Greece


Without the Greeks, we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns – Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable.
Achilles appears in ‘The Illiad’, by Homer. Homer also wrote the ‘Oddity’, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn’t climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Rome

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: “Tee hee, Brutus.” Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Middle Ages

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offence.
Towers and walls of the medieval citadel of Carcassonne, France
Towers and walls of the medieval citadel of Carcassonne, France
https://steve-estvanik.pixels.com/art/medieval
TOLEDO, SPAIN - MAR 2, 2020 - Crusader knights in white tunic, Toledo, Spain
We’re Knights of the Round Table.
We dance whene’er we’re able.
We do routines and chorus scenes
With footwork impeccable.
We dine well here in Camelot.
We eat ham and jam and spam a lot.

-Monty Python & the Holy Grail


In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head. The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello’s interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible.

Renaissance

Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper. The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the ‘Virgin Queen.’ As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted ‘hurrah.’ Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors, all in Islamic pentameter. In Shakespear’s famous play, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet.
Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote ‘Donkey Hote’. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote ‘Paradise Lost.’ Then his wife died and he wrote ‘Paradise Regained.’

New World

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was called the Pilgrim’s Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

France

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon’s flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t bear him any children.

British Empire


The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplary of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign. The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts.

American Revolution

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post with-out stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress.
Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared ‘a horse divided against itself cannot stand.’ Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

The Arts

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called 'Candy'. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, ‘In onion there is strength.’ Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while travelling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed murderer was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.

Modern Times

The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbits. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the ‘Organ of the Species’. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers. The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

And now for something completely different…

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the whimsical world of linguistic lunacy! Today, we present an absurdly educational journey through the realms of Malaprops, Eggcorns, Spoonerisms, and Puns!

Scene opens with a dusty library. An eccentric professor with a monocle and a parrot on his shoulder strides in.

Professor: Ah, welcome, welcome! Sit down, you silly sods, and prepare your brains for a thoroughly ridiculous ride through the twisted tunnels of the English language. First, let us delve into the delightful domain of Malaprops!

Parrot: Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!

Professor: (tapping the parrot’s beak) Quiet, you! Now, a Malaprop, my dear dolts, is when one substitutes a word with a similar-sounding one, often with hilariously nonsensical results. For example, saying “dance a flamingo” instead of “flamenco.” Ridiculous, isn’t it?

Parrot: Flamenco! Flamenco!

Professor: Moving on, we have the enigmatic Eggcorns. These are even more delightful! An eggcorn is when a word or phrase is misheard and then used incorrectly but in a way that still makes a strange sort of sense. Like saying “old-timers’ disease” instead of “Alzheimer’s disease.” Ingenious, isn’t it? Almost as if someone put their brain in a blender.

Cut to a knight in shining armor reading a book upside down.

Knight: I say, that’s eggscellent!

Professor: Yes, quite. Now, brace yourselves for Spoonerisms! Named after the reverend who could barely get his tongue to cooperate, a Spoonerism is when one swaps the initial sounds or letters of words. For instance, instead of “you’ve tasted two worms,” one might say, “you’ve wasted two terms.” Positively preposterous!

Parrot: Pieces of worms! Pieces of worms!

Professor: Finally, we arrive at the pun. Ah, the pun! The lowest form of wit, yet the highest form of groan-inducing wordplay. A pun is when a word with multiple meanings or similar-sounding words are used to create a joke. For example, “I used to be a baker, but I couldn’t make enough dough.” Ha! Get it? Dough!

Knight: Aha! Utterly crumby humor, if you ask me!

Professor: (with exaggerated flourish) And there you have it, you merry band of misfits! Malaprops, Eggcorns, Spoonerisms, and Puns! The most ludicrous, laughable, and utterly lovable aspects of our language! Now, go forth and spread the linguistic lunacy!

Parrot: Pieces of puns! Pieces of puns!

Professor: Oh, do shut up.

Fade out with triumphant medieval music and the sound of the knight accidentally knocking over a suit of armor.

By Cascoly

I've been exploring and leading trips for over 40 years. climbing & trekkng in the Alps, Andes, North American mountain ranges and the Himalaya. I'm retired from mountaineering now but world travels in Europe, Africa & Asia continue to expand my portfolio. Besides private travel, I now focus on escorting trips to India & Turkey. Other interests include wide reading in history and vegetable gardening / cooking. You can download digital images here, or find images at https://steve-estvanik.pixels.com. We have many thousands of images we haven't displayed yet; so, if you have a special need or request please contact us