Like “does the Pope shit in the woods?” or “that train has sailed?”

Also, what good examples can you think of?

  • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    catachresis

    Ha! Here you are answering the actual question but nobody cares!

    Amazing. I had never seen this word before.

    • wjrii@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      Even then, I can’t quite find a single Linguistics term for this phenomenon, where it becomes a thing of its own or even replaces the original. ‘Eggcorn’ and ‘Malaphor’ seem to be pretty decent casual terms.