MALAPROPS
A malaprop is a word used in the belief that it has the meaning really belonging to another word that sounds like it.
Words having no connection with each other at all
but confused owing to superficial resemblance:
Mr. Barton walked forth in cape and boa, to read prayers at the workhouse, euphuistically called the 'College'.—Eliot. (euphemistically)
Euphemism is slurring over badness by giving it a good name: euphuism is a literary style full of antithesis and simile.
In the present self-deprecatory mood in which the English people find themselves.—Spectator. (self-depreciatory)
Depreciate, undervalue: deprecate, pray against.
'An irreparable colleague,' Mr. Gladstone notes in his diary.—Morley. (irreplaceable)
No dead colleague is reparable—though his loss may or may not be so—this side the Day of Judgment.
Surely he was better employed in plying the trades of tinker and smith than in having resource to vice, in running after milkmaids, for example.—Borrow. (recourse)
You may indeed have recourse to a resource, but not vice versa. You may also resort to, which makes the confusion easier.
What she would say to him, how he would take it, even the vaguest predication of their discourse, was beyond him to guess.—E. F. Benson. (prediction)
Predication has nothing to do with the future; it is a synonym, used especially in logic, for statement.
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