30 Jun
2009
30 Jun
'09
12:54 p.m.
On 30 Jun 2009 at 8:59, Scanning wrote:
How 'bout Malapropism ??
/ Steven
> > There's a word for that, where you deliberately mis-spell
> > something
> > for effect, like "kat kare" or "cheez". Years ago my mum
(a
> > retired English teacher) told me what it was, but I can't
> > remember and neither can she.
>
> Cacography?
Not a malapropism (unintentional substitution of a similar-sounding,
but different in meaning word). A recent example that comes to mine
is the BBC Radio 4 series "Ladies of Letters" with Prunella Scales
and Patricia Routledge that's liberally sprinkled with them.
Cacography seems to say "intentional bad writing/spelling", with the
emphasis on "kakos"=bad. I'm not certain that the word captures the
spriit of a variant spelling. Cacography seems to carry the sense of
the opposite of calligraphy.
Or so it seems to me.
FWIW,
Chuck