Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “mustard,” came with a note:
I wouldn’t say writing these X-Factor strips is particularly easy, but it’s not rocket surgery.
I await the song with baited* breath!
*It’s “bated breath,” Jake!
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ malaprops
January 21, 2026 • 9:00 am
Eight Days a Week!
That sounds like it could be a hard day’s night.
… waiting for Lady Mondegreen to ride in on her well-boiled icicle.
Nice wordplay!
I looked up malaprop[ism] and found that its word-butchering sense entered English on the theatrical stage. Strangely, both the New Oxford American and Webster’sr Collegiate dictionaries, which usually offer decent etymologies, stop there. But the Wikipedia entry at least does go a step further and spells out the French connection of the word. I thought the latter was the direct route into English and all there is to it, but I was delighted to find its theatrical detour. (And enjoyable real-life examples.)
Maybe “baited” was a malapropism?
Sort of a strange strip today…I guess it’s in line with the duo singing about humans being prone to fallacies/logic errors?
Well, possibly, to all intense purpoises.
Even Grammarly is objecting to this
Yes, such things are a sort-of Damocles.
And J&M’s comments page has some very good examples.