I take too much delight in things like this… In the space of two days, I ran across dueling malapropisms, one in an e-mail and the other in an Amazon review. And both concerned someone named Ron!
I need to coin a term better than “dueling malapropisms.” I’ll save that for another substantive (ahem) post.
E-mail:
“Last year I preached the funeral service for Ronald Pasch in Oswego. . . several people shared interesting antidotes about Ron.”
Amazon review:
“Dr. Ronald Horton’s book is a welcomed anecdote to those condemning a life with (persistent) sorrow.”
Hey, what’s wrong with that?? Maybe if you’re the type of person who “condemn[s] a life with (persistent) sorrow” an anecdote is exactly what you need to help you buck up! 😉 I could be that the real error was in using “to” rather than “for,” as it should have been following “anecdote.”
(That makes almost as much sense as “antidote” does in that sentence, or at least that’s true with respect to this short snippet. Maybe it makes more sense in the original context, which I’m not taking the time to read now.)