Dear Geist,

Is my learned friend pulling my leg when he says I should look up a goofy common literary error called “double bobbles”? I went through my writing and screenwriting books, and my great big dictionary, but no. Or maybe that’s part of the joke? All intel welcome!

—Just Wondering, Coquitlam BC

Dear Wondering,

Your friend speaks for real. We too have found this fun little bit, in Garner’s Modern American Usage (Bryan A. Garner, Oxford 2009). Here it is: “A double bobble occurs when somebody reaches for a word—in fact the wrong word—and then mistakes another word for that wrong word. It’s a word twice removed from its correct use. Two ready examples are Hobbesian choice (when misused for a difficult choice) and compromise (when misused for comprise).”

Now that you’re aware of it, you’ll spot others. Perhaps these days of lockdowns are even encouraging people at home to come up with endless strings of double bobbles.

—The Editors