Better Living Through Thinking

*1 : use of the wrong word for the context 2 : use of a forced and especially paradoxical figure of speech

The paper printed a correction for the previous day's catachresis: dubbing a local artist-philanthropist a "socialist" when they meant "socialite."

As you might have guessed, "catachresis" is a word favored by grammarians. It can be employed as a fancy label of disparagement for whatever uses the grammarian finds unacceptable. Thus could Henry Fowler, in the 1920s, call "mutual" in "our mutual friend" a catachresis. (Fowler preferred "common," but "mutual" does have an established sense which is correct in that context.) More often, "catachresis" is used for an unintentional misuse and is very close in meaning to "malapropism," which usually refers to an unintentionally _humorous_ misuse of a word. "Catachresis" has been used to describe (or decry) misuses of words since at least 1550. The word comes to us by way of Latin from the Greek noun "katachresis," which means "misuse."