John Stossel, thanking Ann Coulter for debating a panel of liberal college students: "I admire you for going into the lion's nest." Or a den of vipers or a nest of thieves?

Eggcorns and Mondegreens

Two figures of speech for malaphors or their variants:

‪DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS

Eggcorn‬

In linguistics, an eggcorn is an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker's dialect. The new phrase introduces a meaning that is different from the original, but plausible in the same context, such as "old-timers' disease" for "Alzheimer's disease". This is as opposed to a malapropism, where the substitution creates a nonsensical phrase. Classical malapropisms generally derive their comic effect from the fault of the user, while eggcorns are errors that exhibit creativity or logic. Eggcorns often involve replacing an unfamiliar, archaic, or obscure word with a more common or modern word ("baited breath" for "bated breath").

The term eggcorn was coined by a professor of linguistics, Geoffrey Pullum, in September 2003, in response to an article by Mark Liberman on the website Language Log, a blog for linguists. Liberman discussed the case of a woman who substitutes the phrase egg corn for the word acorn, arguing that the precise phenomenon lacked a name; Pullum suggested using "eggcorn" itself. The phenomenon is very similar to the form of wordplay known as the pun, except that, by definition, the speaker (or writer) intends the pun to have some effect on the recipient, whereas one who speaks or writes an eggcorn is unaware of the mistake.

‪Mondegreen‬

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. It most commonly is applied to a line in a poem or a lyric in a song. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954. "Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the word in 2008. The phenomenon is not limited to English, with examples cited by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the Hebrew song Háva Nagíla ("Let's Be Happy"), and in Bollywood movies.

A closely related category is soramimi—songs that produce unintended meanings when homophonically translated to another language. The unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases in speaking is a malapropism. If there is a connection in meaning, it can be called an eggcorn. If a person stubbornly sticks to a mispronunciation after being corrected, that can be described as mumpsimus.

A clerk at Best Buy commenting on a cable company's advice: "I'd take what they say with a grain of sand."

A Fox News contributor talking about a woman who opposes gay marriage: "She should be tarred with a feather." Like getting beaten with a fudge hammer?

From an author writing a career guide for college students: "Schools have deteriorated to the point where most students must fin for themselves." A school of salmon swimming upstream!