malapropism

Updated: May 16, 2025

"The habits of the author could not have been more scholastic," so Judge Webb is quoted, "if he had, like Bacon, spent three years in the University of Cambridge . . . " Bacon, or whoever corrected the play in 1598, might have corrected "primater" into "pia mater," unless Bacon intended the blunder for a malapropism of "Nathaniel, a Curate."

Andrew Lang - Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown