Today’s word of the day, thanks to the Word Guru daily email, is catechresis. It is pronounced / ˌkæt əˈkri sɪs /, with a secondary stress on the first syllable (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/catachresis). It’s a noun, and it means “misuse or strained use of words, as in a mixed metaphor, occurring either in error or for rhetorical effect” (ibid.). Samuel Johnson, in his 1755 Dictionary, defined it this way: “It is, in rhetorick, the abuse of a trope, when the words are too far wrested from their native signification, or when one word is abusively put for another, for want of the proper word” (https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=catachresis).

Merriam-Webster breaks it down into either “use of the wrong word for the context” or “use of a forced and especially paradoxical figure of speech (such as blind mouths)” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catachresis). It then goes on to explain, “As you might have guessed, catachresis is a word favored by grammarians. It can sometimes be used merely as a fancy label of disparagement for uses the grammarian finds unacceptable -as when Henry Fowler insisted in 1926 that mutual in ‘our mutual friend’ was a catachresis. (Fowler preferred common, but mutual does have an established sense which is correct in that context.) The earliest recorded uses of catachresis date to the mid-16th century, and it has been used to describe (or decry) misuses of a word ever since. Catachresis comes to us by way of Latin from the Greek word katachrēsis, which means ‘misuse’” (ibid.).

It appears in English in the “1580s, from Latin catachresis, from Greek katakhresis ‘misuse’ (of a word), from katakhresthai ‘to misuse,’ from kata ‘down’ (here with a sense of ‘perversion;’ see cata-) + khresthai ‘to use’ (from PIE root *gher- (2) ‘to like, want’)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=catechresis). The “Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘to like, want’ … might form all or part of: catachresis; charisma; chervil; chrestomathy; Eucharist; exhort; exhortation; greedy; hortative; hortatory; yearn” (ibid.). It seems like a pretty broad range of meanings for words coming from that one PIE root.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) was an English writer and bon vivant. He was born in Dublin to a woman who was a playwright and novelist. Around age 20, Sheridan fought two duels with Captain Thomas Matthews, neither of which ended in death. The duels were fought because Matthews said something disparaging about Sheridan’s fiancée, Elizabeth Ann Linley. “Later that year, Elizabeth and the 21-year-old Richard eloped and set up house in London on a lavish scale. Sheridan had little money and no immediate prospects of any, other than his wife’s dowry. The young couple entered the fashionable world and apparently held up their end in entertaining” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brinsley_Sheridan).

So what do you do when you are a young bon vivant with a wife who grew up wealthy and has expensive tastes? They certainly didn’t live frugally since they had reputations to maintain. After going through Elizabeth’s dowry, Sheridan did the only thing he thought could bring in money—he wrote a play.

That first play (he would write several more) he wrote is called The Rivals. It’s in the tradition of plays called comedy of manners, and it is a comedy. “The Rivals was first performed at Covent Garden, London, on 17 January 1775, with comedian Mary Bulkley as Julia Melville. It was roundly vilified by both the public and the critics for its length, for its bawdiness and for the character of Sir Lucius O’Trigger being a meanly written role played very badly. The actor, John Lee, after being hit with an apple during the performance, stopped and addressed the audience, asking ‘By the pow’rs, is it personal? — is it me, or the matter?’ Apparently, it was both. Sheridan immediately withdrew the play and in the next 11 days, rewrote the original (the Larpent manuscript) extensively” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rivals). “Rewritten and with a new actor, Laurence Clinch, in the role of O’Trigger, the play reopened on 28 January to significant acclaim. Indeed, it became a favourite of the royal family, receiving five command performances in ten years, and also in the colonies. It became a standard in the repertoires of 19th-century companies in England and the US” (ibid.).

I saw a televised production of The Rivals back in the 1970s. It was part of a PBS series called Classic Theatre: The Humanities in Drama. It was actually the basis for a theater class taught by Anthony Abbot at Davidson College, and we would meet at Dr. Abbot’s house to watch each Sunday night (keeping in mind that this was before VCRs). It came with a textbook and everything.

Here’s a quick summation of the premise: “The plot centres on the two young lovers, Lydia and Jack. Lydia, who reads a lot of popular novels of the time, wants a purely romantic love affair. To court her, Jack pretends to be “Ensign Beverley”, a poor army officer. Lydia is enthralled with the idea of eloping with a poor soldier in spite of the objections of her guardian, Mrs. Malaprop, a moralistic widow. Mrs. Malaprop is the chief comic figure of the play, thanks to her continual misuse of words that sound like the words she intends to use, but mean something completely different (the term malapropism was coined in reference to the character)” (ibid.).

Here is Mrs. Malaprop on what a woman should know: “I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries;—but above all, Sir Anthony, she should be mistress of orthodoxy, that she might not mis-spell, and mis-pronounce words so shamefully as girls usually do; and likewise that she might reprehend the true meaning of what she is saying. This, Sir Anthony, is what I would have a woman know;—and I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it” (https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-rivals/characters/mrs-malaprop-delia).

From Act 3, scene 3: “”Sure, if I reprehend any thing in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!” (https://iuuk.mff.cuni.cz/~andrew/EAP/Malapropisms.pdf).

A few random quotes from Mrs. Malaprop: “You will promise to forget this fellow – illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.”

“She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.”

“He is the very pineapple of politeness!”

Shakespeare also created a character who had a similar bad habit, Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing. Sometimes examples of catachresis are called Dogberryisms instead of Malapropisms. In either case, the verbal humor is fun, especially for someone who likes language.

Today’s image: “Mrs. Malaprop (Mary Louise Wilson) tells Captain Jack Absolute (Scott Ferrara) she cannot comprehend why someone is saying such awful things about her vocabulary in the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of ‘The Rivals,’ part of the 2004-2005 season” (https://www.flickr.com/photos/huntingtontheatreco/6762131989).