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.
November 20, 2016 at 9:18 am |
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”.
November 20, 2016 at 9:35 am |
Believe it or not, I’ve actually posted about POP games, including on Jeopardy:
6/28/10: POP games
https://arnoldzwicky.org/2010/06/28/pop-games/
But yes, “Sexual Fantasy Football” is especially fine.