Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From Larry Horn (through some intermediaries), two cartoons by the great gag cartoonist Leo Cullum on the theme of English morphology:

  (#1)

That’s retox, on the model of detox (a clipping of detoxification), occurring in the idiomatic PP in detox. So the man on the left is retoxifying, returning to drinking alcohol.

  (#2)

That’s boned the PSP of the verb bone ‘remove the bone(s) from’ (though it could in principle also mean ‘supply with bone(s)’), a verbing of the noun bone; and deboned the PSP of the verb debone ‘remove the bones from’, with the derivational prefix de- of removal, reversal, or separation. So yes, the same thing.

Cullum on this blog:

7/3/10  We need to talk (link): a Cullum cartoon on the evolution of language

5/12/12  Gag cartoons (link): 4 Cullum cartoons, plus a brief writeup about him

10/16/12  Subtexting (link): a Cullum cartoon on texting and subtexting

4/3/13  Eggs over easily (link): a cartoon in the style of  Cullum, on grammatical peeving

This entry was posted on June 11, 2013 at 9:59 am and is filed under Clipping, Derivation, Linguistics in the comics, Morphology, Verbing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.