Vernacularian Slips

Writers love language, and we notice things about it that others might not. For example, see if you can pick out a pattern here:

My husband called someone to tell him about a friend who had died and said, “I just wanted to pass on some information to you…”

We were discussing radio stations and somebody said, “I am so out of tune with what’s going on with music right now…”

A guy was talking about accidentally getting locked out of a basketball game and said, “I was outside bouncing around trying to keep warm.”

A friend was having some problems with a root canal and I said, “Oh, man, what a bite…”

A woman explaining her bad mood said she had PMS and just wanted to “go with the flow…”

We were talking about what kind of phones to order and somebody said, “Well, let’s not get hung up on it.”

A hospital spokesman was asked about a press release for their new maternity wing and said, “It’s a little too premature to announce anything…”

Get the drift?

Death…pass on
Music…In tune
Basketball…bounce
Teeth…bite
PMS…flow
Phone…hung up
Pregnancy…premature

It’s all about people unconsciously slipping into the vernacular of whatever it is they’re talking about. So I call them “Vernacularian Slips.” Not quite the same thing as a pun, they’re a little like Freudian slips, only their name is much more difficult to pronounce.

Now that you know about Vernacularian Slips, you’ll hear them all over the place. In fact, I was just telling somebody about it recently, and the very next day he e-mailed me one he’d heard while having lunch with a friend: “The guy said, ‘This sandwich just doesn’t cut the mustard…’”

See what I mean?