Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm:

A straightforward pun on erectile dysfunction, with /p/ for /k/ (the two stops are articulatorily distant but acoustically very similar; they function together in half-rhymes and mishearings as well as in imperfect puns like this one).

Previously on this blog: “Reptile dysfunction” of 2/13/11, with two things: reptile dysfunction as a mistake (of one sort or another); reptile dysfunction as a silly joke.

This entry was posted on July 10, 2015 at 2:20 am and is filed under Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Puns. 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.