The unusually explicit source
With One Hand, Erase the Dagger says an earlier version, Protologia, was going to concern “unadapted neologisms.” The same footnote rejects explicit novelty manufacture and instead describes embracing what “fails pleasingly”.
Failure modes
- mishearing: mouth-shape outruns spelling;
- misremembering: the recovered form differs from the source but remains usable;
- misdivision: a word is segmented into false roots;
- false etymology: invented ancestry produces a new semantic route;
- wrong suffix: a familiar learned ending lends counterfeit authority;
- translation drift: another language is approached by sound, partial knowledge or useful wrongness;
- machine mediation: autocomplete, generated text and interface behavior supply unexpected material.
Relation to Quantum Entendre
Not every malformed word is a Quantum Entendre, but the practices share a procedural family: both are interested in the surplus produced when an apparently stable sign supports more than one route through sound, spelling or context.