Arnold Zwicky's Blog

The June 26th One Big Happy, with an updated version of a bit of childlore:

(#1)

It starts out traditionally, with a retort to insult beginning “I’m rubber and you’re glue…”, but then it takes a modern-tech social-media turn (while preserving the glue … you rhyme).

The xkcd #1139 of 11/29/12 (Rubber and Glue) takes a grim scientific view of the retort:

(#2)

With this account on the Explain xkcd site:

“I’m rubber, you’re glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you” is a school-ground retort used by children to suggest that one’s insults are being ignored by the intended recipient of the insult and counter that the insult rather refers to the insulter. On a deeper level, it may imply that a person insulting others is an indication of their own insecurity and weakness.

Meanwhile, on The Big Bang Theory, Jim Parsons’s character Sheldon Cooper goes all-out technical:

(#3) From “The Bat Jar Conjecture” (S1 E13, 4/21/08)

This entry was posted on July 23, 2018 at 6:12 am and is filed under Folklore, Insults, Language of children, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Pragmatics. 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.