Two POPs

Today’s Rhymes With Orange:

Hilary Price is enormously fond of POPs (phrasal overlap portmanteaus). Here we get:

gingerbread house + house of correction = gingerbread house of correction

gingerbread house is a non-subsective compound (a gingerbread house isn’t a house, but it resembles one). And house of correction (NOAD2: ‘an institution for the short-term confinement of minor offenders’) is an administrative euphemism for jail.

Meanwhile, as I was preparing this posting, a broadcast of an old NCIS: Los Angeles episode brought me this complex gem:

That [FBI] badge better be real, or my partner’s going to kick you in the FBI balls.

Two levels here. At the upper level, we get a combo:

kick s.o. in the balls + FBI balls = kick s.o. in the FBI balls

And at the lower level, we get a straightforward POP:

FBI + eyeballs = FBI balls

Getting kicked in the balls is painful; getting kicked in the eyeballs sounds much more painful, and damaging.

2 Responses to “Two POPs”

  1. Bigmacbear Says:

    Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! make good use of POPs in their Before and After categories. I’ve tried my hand at this and one of my personal favorites is “Sexual Fantasy Football”.

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