From today's Daily Telegraph (UK one) of malapropisms  from some final 
year papers.

Among the gems from this year's undergraduate exams are an economics 
student at City University in London student who attributed Northern 
Rock's downfall to the "laxative enforcement policies". 

In literature, a student from Bath Spa University wrote of Margaret 
Atwood's book: "The Handmaid's Tale shows how patriarchy treats women 
as escape goats." 

A University of Southampton student concerned by global warming wrote 
that: "Tackling climate change will require an unpresidented 
response." 



This I like the best -
And a fellow undergraduate concerned by the threat of diseases, wrote: 
"Control of infectious diseases is very important in case an academic 
breaks out." 

Other examples come from students at St Helens College of Art and 
Design near Liverpool, who were asked to "outline the importance of 
the four Noble Truths to the Buddhist faith". 

One offered the baffling response: "Nirvana cannot be described 
because there are no words in existence for doing so. Not 
non-existence either, it is beyond the very ideas of existing and not 
existing." 

This must have been submitted by a former politician known for his 
tortuous mangling of some piddly language he called English..

Students at the same university were asked to outline the importance 
of the railway in 19th-century Britain. One wrote: "The railways were 
invented to bring the Irish from Dublin to Liverpool where they were 
promptly arrested for being vagrants", while another responded: "The 
railways were invented to take the weight off the motorways." 

A student at the University of the West of England in Bristol 
astonished his tutor by spelling the subject of one of his favourite 
topics wrong: "alchol" instead of "alcohol". Another wrote "whom" 
instead of "womb" in an anatomy paper, and one replaced the word 
"abdominal" with "abominous".  

Sir, your hypogastric region is totally abominous to me.

I wonder if the collective noun for a group of lecherous (er 
lecturers) is an epidemic of academics?

Colin


--
cdb,  on 28/08/2008



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