The art of getting it wrong.
About Malaphorium
Sometimes two perfectly good expressions collide, and something wonderfully wrong comes out.
That's a malaphor.
Welcome to Malaphorium, a visual gallery dedicated to the fine art of mixing things up. Familiar sayings take unexpected turns, common expressions lose their way, and somehow, it all makes perfect nonsense.
Each malaphor is brought to life through imagery, giving these wonderfully confused expressions a whole new perspective.
Some will make you laugh. Some will make you think. Others might leave you scratching your head.
That's half the fun.
It started with a murder. Sort of.
The story of Malaphorium actually began decades ago, in the Netherlands.
In Dutch, a proverb or familiar saying is called a spreekwoord. But when someone mixes up two sayings or completely butchers an expression, there's a wonderfully fitting word for it: spreekmoord.
Just one letter changes everything.
Woord means word. Moord means murder.
So instead of a proverb, you've committed a little murder of language.
I've always loved that. Not just the wordplay itself, but how getting an expression completely wrong can sometimes produce something even better than the original.
I started keeping a document of these linguistic accidents decades ago. One mixed-up saying became another, and another, until the collection grew into more than 250 Dutch spreekmoorden.
And apparently, my fascination with murdering perfectly good expressions survived the move across the Atlantic.
The English collection has since grown to more than 150 malaphors of its own.
At some point, I decided these expressions deserved more than a place in a document. Why not give them a visual life?
That idea became Malaphorium, a gallery where language, photography, and a little creative absurdity come together.
And because it all started in Dutch, a Dutch-language version is naturally in the works, too.
The person behind the nonsense
I'm Mic Schut, a Dutch-born web and digital creative based in the St. Louis area.
Most of my professional life revolves around websites, design, digital marketing, and helping ideas find their place online. But I also enjoy creating things simply because they're interesting, entertaining, or a little unusual.
Malaphorium is one of those projects.
It's a creative playground where language, photography, design, and a healthy dose of absurdity come together.
If you're curious about my other work, you can find me at micschut.com.
A picture is worth a thousand mixed-up words
The gallery combines creative concepts with photography from talented photographers, credited wherever applicable.
The result is a growing collection of visual malaphors, each with its own little twist.
And the collection is far from finished.
Have a malaphor of your own? Click here to submit it and help the collection grow.
Until then, explore the gallery, enjoy the confusion, and remember:
It's not rocket surgery.