The President Is Feeling Bleu

Quote: “Commander in Cheese” -White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, referringto President Trump

Figure of Speech: acyrologia (a-keer-o-LO-gia), the fortunate mix-up. More commonly known as the malapropism (MAL-a-prop-ism). 

This slip of the tongue is as gouda it gets. Whey to go, Kellyanne! While this was no muenster of a mistake, it never curd to us that the President of the United States would command dairy. 

Please don’t edam Figaro for these puns. When it comes to cheese, he can’t help himself.

“Commander in cheese” makes an excellent malapropism.  It’s an eponym named for the addlebrained literary character, Mrs. Malaprop.  But credit the Greeks for coining the figure two and a half millennia before.  The acyrologia (“unauthorized speech”) swaps a word with a like-sounding but fortuitously wrong substitute.While Ms. Conway deserves to be feta’d for her malapropism, of course the figure’s reigning master is Yogi Berra.

What makes Ms. Conway’s slipup unusual is that it seems to have been accidental. Usually when she speaks nonsense it’s on purpose, a great rhetorical technique of obfuscation. Here is her complete sentence (if you can call this salmagundi of words a sentence):

The problem with the President of the United States, and the commander of cheese — chief — expressing that opinion is what?

Snappy Answer:  “He just commands American cheese, right?”