Dubya’s classic verbal gaffe “misunderestimated” has successfully entered the national idiom. I hope Sarah Palin’s recent “refudiated” is likewise so honored.
While it was merely a humorous fluke, Mike Tyson’s “I guess I’m gonna fade into Bolivian” was beautiful in so many ways.
What English calamities still make you laugh?
Roger Clemens’ claim that Mcnamee “misremembered”.
A baseball commentator’s comment about a player unable to speak Mexican.
Off topic, but that just looks like some screenwriter got lazy coming up with a character’s name.
What should we call this guy? Oh I dunno..how about Joe Namey McName, no wait I’ve got it! McName-e.
I’ll always remember my former co-worker, who after sending a particularly unintelligible email followed up with another one apologizing for the “confusement” it caused.
Didn’t Warren Harding mis-choose/invent the now-accepted word “normalcy”? (wiki link)
What are we conversating about again?
I once saw an unintentionally hilarious federal trial stemming from a lawsuit filed against the state by a prison inmate acting pro se, in which the inmate referred to those making allegations against him as the “alligators.”
While that might have happened in real life, that actually was in an old “Amos ‘n’ Andy” episode. I think Calhoun might have said it “I deny the allegations, and I resent the allegator!” I have always vowed that if I ever ended up in court and was asked how I responded to the allegations, that would be my response.
There’s tons of good ones from the football (soccer) world:
Kevin Keegan: “The referee was vertically ten yards away”
Ron Atkinson: “The Spaniards have been reduced to aiming aimless balls into the box”
Ron Atkinson again: “Well, Clive, it’s all about the two M’s - movement and positioning”
Gerry Francis: “What I said to them at half time would be unprintable on the radio”
Alan Parry: “And Ritchie has now scored eleven goals, exactly double the number he scored last season”
Bobby Robson: “We didn’t underestimate them, they were just a lot better than we thought”
Ha, this reminds me of one of my all-time favourites:
Ron Saunders: “Allegations are all very well, but I would like to know who these alligators are!”
Not quite the same thing, but last week on The Soup, they showed Shia LaBeouf mispronounce the word “epitome” as ep-i-tome.
Charles Shackleford… power forward for the North Carolina State Wolfpack on being complimented for his ability to go left and right replied, “I’m Amphibious”…
A tour guide in Italy was telling us about how things used to be in ancient Rome
and askd us to “try to imaginate.”
Another tour guide in Greece, while telling a hypothetical story, said, “it’s just a suppose.”
It’s new to me, but I’m kind of fond of ‘insinuendo’.
According to the Random House, the verb “misremember” has been around since the 1500s.
How about Barack Obama calling a Navy medic a “corpse man”?
Or the time he said he was a fan of the Penn State “Nittaly” Lions?
I feel sorry for him, because I do the same thing with hyperbole. I mean, I know the correct pronunciation, but I learned the word in print first.
And I’ve always thought it weird that I also learned epitome from print first, but have successfully migrated to the proper pronunciation.
This should be a word! A combination of confusion and amusement. Perfectly cromulent to me!
Someone at work told me she was bleeding " profusciously". This was twice as funny due to the size of her cut.
I use the term ‘strategery’ intentionally. stra-TEE-jury.