Cartoons today:
(#1)
(#2)
On #1: Dilbert reports advice about using language to make him more likeable. The first half of this advice — using people’s names — is advice for salespeople (it’s “friendly”, though many people dislike strangers who call them by their first names). The second half — giving insincere compliments — is simply manipulative.
On #2: a pun on two senses of poach, roughly ‘cook an egg (in a specific way)’ and ‘hunt or catch illegally’. According to NOAD2, the etymology of the first is straightforward (ultimately from Old French pochier, earlier ‘enclose in a bag’, from poche ‘bag, pocket’). The second is more complex. NOAD2 has early 16th century ‘push roughly together’ (this could use more thought about the semantics), apparently related to poke (though it suggests that OFr pocher might have contributed to this sense as well as the first).
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