The One Big Happy in today’s comics feed, a charming 11-panel Sunday special:
The panel I’m interested is the one right in the middle, panel 6, in which the kids’ father says, of the mystery leaf: “from one of those exotic trees, like a Quesadilla benjamina, or something.”
A quesadilla is a kind of food, and a Ficus benjamina is a plant, an ornamental fig, but quesadilla could be the name of a plant: “Marguerite climbed the trunk of the mighty quesadilla in no time at all”. Or the name of an animal: “The fierce quesadilla pawed the ground before charging.” Or a the name of a disease: “That’s the worst case of Feldspar’s quesadilla I’ve seen in years.” Or the anatomical name of a bodypart: “The patient broke his left quesadilla in two places.”
From James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, with Mitty fantasizing himself as a surgeon: “Coreopsis has set in.” (Coreopsis is a bright yellow daisy.)
Technical-sounding names in one domain can be playfully imported as names in another domain. Laughter ensues.
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