There's Many A Slip - Sepia Saturday

This week’s photo from The State Library of New South Wales  features a couple embracing whilst a cat escapes from between their legs. The man is in uniform and they are either saying ‘goodbye’ or ‘hello’. The cat is bored by all the spooning going on.

This reminded me of the man who said to a lady he did not know, "Excuse me, Madame. Your slip is showing.


Annoyed, she retorted, "Don't look now but so is your father's."


All sorts of slip exist. It's a fielding position in cricket,  a tie, a place where ships are launched and even:

A slip of the tongue

Which leads me to William Archibald Spooner

Caricature of William Archibald Spooner - 1898
By Leslie Ward - published in Vanity Fair

Spooner became famous for so-called spoonerisms or play on words where constonants, vowels and parts of words are mixed.

And example appropriate to our prompt picture might be, "It is kisstomary to cuss the bride."

This Diamond Jubilee Year of our Queen

Queen Elizabeth II - 2007
(NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Spooner could have said, "Let's glaze our arses to the queer old Dean" but actually he is reputed to have said this alluding to our other "Diamond" Lady.

Queen Victoria - c1900
(One of her last photos from 'Victoria Images of her World)

It's a common occurrence for a language to be misused either by accident or deliberately. The term malapropism comes from Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The Rivals and in particular the character Mrs Malaprop who frequently misspoke words to comic effect. (Malapropos is and adlective/adverb meaning  inappropriate/inappropriately) derived from the French mal à propos (literally "ill-suited").

Comedians and stars in films and on television have made use of malopropism's and not to leave the cat in our picture out in the cold there's this from Stan Laurel in the Laurel and Hardy film "Any Old Port".

"What a terrible cat's after me."

To avoid further linguistic disasters I suggest you take a look at other interpretations of our lovers at Sepia Saturday-130