Arnold Zwicky's Blog

A portmanteau (fishwich), a perfect pun (on the lam / lamb), an imperfect pun (bar / bark mitzvah):

(#1) Codger Zippy contemplates his fishwich

(#2) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in this Bizarro / Wayno cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)

(#3) A Mother Goose and Grimm in which a puppy becomes a dog

Zippy and the fishwich.  fishwich = fish + sandwich: a fried battered fish (usually cod or haddock) in a bun. A basic fishwich:

(#3)

Fishwiches are on offer many places. Here’s a loaded fishwich, or Fish’wich, from the Lenwich shop at 469 Columbus Ave. in Manhattan:

(#4)

Here on the SF peninsula, fishwiches abound — notably at Alfonso Scunatelli’s Famous Fishwich (formerly Sally’s Famous Fishwich), Pier 43 1/2, SF:

(#5)

Fleeting on a young sheep. #2 turns on the ambiguity of /læm/ — in lamb ‘young sheep’ and in the idiom on the lam. On the latter, from NOAD:

noun lam: North American informal (in phrase on the lam) in flight, especially from the police: he went on the lam and is living under a false name.

Coming of age. #3 turns on the name of a Jewish ritual. From Wikipedia:

Bar Mitzvah is a Jewish coming of age ritual for boys. Bat Mitzvah is a Jewish coming of age ritual for girls. The plural is B’nai Mitzvah for boys, and B’not Mitzvah for girls.

According to Jewish law, when Jewish boys become 13 years old, they become accountable for their actions and become a bar mitzvah. A girl becomes a bat mitzvah at the age of 12 according to Orthodox and Conservative Jews, and at the age of 13 according to Reform Jews. Prior to reaching bar mitzvah age, the child’s parents hold the responsibility for the child’s actions. After this age, the boys and girls bear their own responsibility for Jewish ritual law, tradition, and ethics, and are able to participate in all areas of Jewish community life. Traditionally, the father of the bar mitzvah gives thanks to God that he is no longer punished for the child’s sins. In addition to being considered accountable for their actions from a religious perspective, a thirteen-year-old may be counted towards a prayer quorum and may lead prayer and other religious services in the family and the community.

The pun is then on bar of bar mitzvah vs. bark ‘the sharp explosive cry of certain animals, especially a dog, fox, or seal’ (NOAD). A boy becomes a man in a bar mitzvah ceremony, and a puppy becomes a dog in a bark mitzvah ceremony.

This entry was posted on March 24, 2018 at 5:14 am and is filed under Idioms, Language and food, Language and religion, Linguistics in the comics, 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.