"Malaprop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sheridan the work of a more modern age. We have here no indelicacy or profanity, excepting the occasional oath, then fashionable; but we meet that satirical play on the manners and sentiments of men, which distinguishes later humour. In Mrs. Malaprop, we have some of that confusion of words, which seems to have been traditional upon the stage. Thus, she says that Captain Absolute is the very "pine-apple of perfection," and that to think of her daughter's marrying a penniless man, gives her the "hydrostatics." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... tempting oyster. In syllogism do we live and move, and have our being. This is the grand discovery—the last great contribution to philosophy from Concord's greatest philosopher. We suddenly discover that we have been syllogizing like philosophers, as Mrs. Malaprop discovered that her children had been speaking English. The illustration of this overwhelming discovery is peculiarly happy, for he applies it to the discovery of a red flannel rag in the back yard or garden, and, after detecting the red flannel ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... Sydney Smith, which are still as current as ever. One of the earliest of them was Seba Smith, who, under the name of Major Jack Downing, did his best to make Jackson's administration ridiculous. B. P. Shillaber's "Mrs. Partington"—a sort of American Mrs. Malaprop—enjoyed great vogue before the war. Of a somewhat higher kind were the Phoenixiana, 1855, and Squibob Papers, 1856, of Lieutenant George H. Derby, "John Phoenix," one of the pioneers of literature ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers |
