The Institution of Silly and Meaningless Sayings (ISMS) has a database of "more than 900 genuine isms". This category appears to combine what we have taken to calling eggcorns (e.g. legal waver) with mixed metaphors (e.g. "He put his finger right on the nail"), redundancies (e.g. "The Regional RMT (regional regional management team)"), malapropisms (e.g. "He was pruning himself in the mirror"), tautologies (e.g. "The dogs were... they were... just like... animals"), overnegations (e.g. "There's a complete lack of indiscipline in the team") and some other things (e.g. "He's had three attempts on goal and neither of them were any good").
Posted by Mark Liberman at June 16, 2004 09:19 PM