Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Not quite what you think. Two cartoons: a Mother Goose and Grimm from yesterday, today’s Bizarro:

(#1)

(#2)

To appreciate #1, you need to know about the custom of putting out a cat for the night (V + Prt put out ‘put sth. outside (a house)’), and you need to recognize the piece of heavy earth-moving equipment in the room, with brand names Caterpilllar and (clipped) Cat.

To appreciate #2, you need to know that Zeus / Jupiter is the mythological hurler of thunderbolts, and you need to recognize Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat (with one of his accompanying Things) and to see that the figure in the cartoon is a hybrid of Zeus and Dr. Seuss’s Cat, a combination conveyed by the portmanteau name Dr. Zeuss.

Heavy machinery. An ad for Cats:

(#3)

From Wikipedia, including the company’s own naming story:

Caterpillar Inc., is an American corporation which designs, manufactures, markets and sells machinery, engines, financial products and insurance to customers via a worldwide dealer network.Caterpillar is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives.

… Caterpillar machinery is recognizable by its trademark “Caterpillar Yellow” livery and the “CAT” logo.

… On Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1904, [Benjamin Holt] successfully tested [an] updated machine plowing the soggy delta land of Roberts Island [near Stockton CA].

Company photographer Charles Clements was reported to have observed that the tractor crawled like a caterpillar, and Holt seized on the metaphor. “Caterpillar it is. That’s the name for it!” Some sources, though, attribute this name to British soldiers in July 1907.

(In either case, the name seems to have been metaphorical.)

The hurler of thunderbolts. Hurling thunderbolts is one of the prime attributes of the Father of the Gods, as in these two statues, of Zeus Keraunos (keraunos ‘thunderbolt, lightning’) and of Jupiter of Smyrna:

(#4)

(#5)

The Cat in the Hat. Then there’s Dr. Seuss’s creation, discussed (and illustrated) in a posting of 10/17/13. From the book:

“I will pick up the hook.
you will see something new.
Two things. And I call them
Thing One and Thing Two.
These Things will not bite you.
They want to have fun.”
Then, out of the box
came Thing Two and Thing One!

(#6)

In #2, we see Thing 2 riding Zeuss’s thunderbolt.

This entry was posted on July 9, 2016 at 6:53 am and is filed under Clipping, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Naming, Portmanteaus, 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.