An exchange reported on Facebook this morning, by one of the participants, EF:
JK: It’s a matter of which came first, the horse or the egg.
EF: [stares at him] Do you realize what you just said?
JK: [long silence] This is going to end up in a Facebook post, isn’t it?
EF: Yes. Yes it is.
Meanwhile, don’t put the cart before the chicken.
In pictures:
(#1) Horse and egg
(#2) Chicken and cart
As with transposition / exchange / Spoonerism errors, idiom blens (aka malaphors) are sometimes committed intentionally, for jocular or rhetorical effect, as in this 1/24/14 tweet (by Will Hayllar):
Which came first, the horse or the egg? Meat industry could learn much from the way the egg industry responded to its past crises
July 14, 2017 at 7:13 am |
Reblogged this on iloveidioms and commented:
Nice, Love to read this.
February 28, 2018 at 7:17 pm |
Would love a shout out for my malaphor blog, and perhaps a little love for my book on malaphors, “He Smokes Like a Fish and other Malaphors”, available on Amazon. Thanks! davemalaphor
March 1, 2018 at 3:48 am |
Well, now you’ve used my blog to give a shout out for your malaphor blog and your book.