Today we tip our linguistic hat to Irish dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan, born on this date in seventeen-fifty-one. Sheridan is the most famous literary member of a famed family that includes Governors General of Canada, authors, and society beauties. (来源：专业英语学习网站 http://www.EnglishCN.com)

Richard Sheridan is quoted at more than half a dozen places in the Unabridged Dictionary, ranging from the now-obsolete adoors (meaning at the door) to the lively jest meaning laughingstock.

But Sheridan is remembered by wordlovers for creating Mrs. Malaprop, a character in his comedy The Rivals. Mrs. Malaprop ?and yes, that name does evoke mal-appropriate, doesn't it?-- misspoke herself to gales of laughter, so much so that the word malapropism came to refer to a usually humorous misapplication of a word or phrase; or, more specifically, to the blundering use of a word that sounds somewhat like the one intended but is usually ludicrously wrong in the context.

For example, Mrs. Malaprop herself declared one fellow to be. . .the very pineapple of politeness where most people would have chosen the word pinnacle.

We'll end with an original, mind-spinning malapropism from the lady herself: If I reprehend anything in this world, she declared, it is the use of my oracular tongue and a nice derangement of epitaphs.