It's been a while since I've been truly nerdy on this page. OK, gleefully word-nerdy; I have been civics-nerdy recently, such as my column on democracy a couple of weeks back (that was a little word-nerdy, but serious).

But a recent visit with a friend and one of my fur-nephews introduced me to a type of speech I knew but didn't have a name for: malaphors.

You've seen and heard them as well; there was one in letters last week, from Harry Herget of Little Rock: "This isn't rocket surgery."

Stewart Edelstein of Word Smarts writes: "We've all done it: You're thinking about one thing, and then you decide to say another, creating a mishmash of words and syllables. Perhaps you were thinking "surprised" and then "excited," so it came out of your mouth as "exprised." Extend it to full phrases, and that's how we get the humorous figure of speech called the malaphor."

You might think it sounds familiar, and you'd be right. It's a portmanteau of "metaphor" (a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable) and "malapropism" (an unintentional misuse of a word or phrase, usually to humorous effect; the name comes from Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play "The Rivals").

Edelstein notes: "'Malaphor' is a literary term that combines ­'mal-,' meaning 'bad,' with the Greek pherein, meaning 'to carry,........

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