Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Rhymes With Orange, a Psychiatrist cartoon in which a ketchup squeeze-bottle treats a mayonnaise jar:

with a surprising pun on the verb hold, a pun that’s possible only because of the nature of this particular analysand (a sentient jar of mayonnaise)

The crucial ambiguity, from NOAD:

verb hold-1:

1 … [c] embrace (someone): Mark pulled her into his arms and held her close.

… 7 … [b] North American informal refrain from adding or using (something, typically an item of food or drink): a strawberry margarita, but hold the tequila.

plus a metonymic ambiguity between reference to a container (like a mayonnaise jar), which can be embraced; and reference to the contents of a container (like the substance mayonnaise), which you can refrain from using.

This entry was posted on March 29, 2024 at 8:28 am and is filed under Ambiguity, Comic conventions, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Metonymy, 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.