30 Times People Posted Comedy Gold On FB Marketplace, Thanks To Similar-Sounding Words

Bored Panda compiled this list of chucklesome marketplace listings from the r/BoneAppleTea subreddit. The community over there loves funny malapropisms. What's a malapropism, you ask?

According to Merriam-Webster, it's a "usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase." One example of a malapropism can be "Jesus healing those leopards." The intention was "lepers" but, as the two words sound similar, the person accidentally spelled it "leopards."

A similar phenomena are eggcorns. The same Merriam-Webster dictionary describes them as "a word or phrase that sounds like and is mistakenly used in a seemingly logical or plausible way for another word or phrase either on its own or as part of a set expression."

New Scientist writes that eggcorns are often more satisfying and poetic than the correct word or expression. An example could be "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes."

Eggcorns originated from the altered form of "acorn". Mark Liberman in his linguistics blog Language Log wrote about a woman who would write "eggcorns" instead of "acorns." Since it didn't fit with other phenomena, such as malapropisms and spoonerisms, he went with linguist Geoffrey Pullum's suggestion to refer to them as "eggcorns."

There's another strange word – spoonerism. This one is not about spelling or writing. It's an error people make when speaking. A spoonerism happens when a speaker switches the first sounds of two words. The funny meaning is usually not intentional. An example would be “a scoop of boy trouts” instead of “a troop of boy scouts.”

And the origin of spoonerisms is quite hilarious as well. It all started with a clergyman around the 1900s. The poor man would often make such slips as "a blushing crow" instead of "a crushing blow."

The man's name was William Archibald Spooner. History refers to him as a nervous man and his slips allegedly became the stuff of legends during his lifetime. His last name inspired the official term for such verbal slips as "tons of soil" instead of "sons of toil."

If we're talking about spelling and verbal mistakes, let's touch upon misheard utterances as well. Remember that TLC song "Waterfalls" and how many of us thought they were singing "Don't go, Jason Waterfalls?" Although there are several threads about it on the r/BoneAppleTea subreddit, technically it's not a malapropism.

Another common example of a mondegreen is the Jimmy Hendrix lyric "Excuse me, while I kiss the sky." Many people misheard it as "Excuse me, while I kiss this guy." We call these misheard lyrics ‘mondegreens’. In her piece for The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova describes them as "a misheard word or phrase that makes sense in your head, but is, in fact, entirely incorrect."

The word "mondegreen" originates from journalist Sylvia Wright. She recounted her misheard lyrics on the Scottish folk song 'The Bonny Earl of Morray'. Wright thought the line "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray and laid him on the green" was actually "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray and Lady Mondegreen."

Whether the entries on this list are malapropisms, eggcorns or simple autocorrect mistakes, they make for a pretty good laugh. So don't hesitate and upvote your favorite listings from Facebook Marketplace. Also, let us know your funniest spelling or verbal mistake in the comments!