The boneless bananas came to me on Facebook on 12/15 through Ruth Lawrence, who passed on this photo from the Give Me A Sign site on FB:
(#1) [RL’s comment:] I feel so reassured now
My reply on FB:
Apparently, the store is treating boneless banana as appositive (rather than intersective / restrictive) modification — gently reminding the shopper that bananas are in fact boneless and therefore easy to process. (Compare an example I considered in Language Log years ago, pilotless drones, or the example pinko Communists from some dark years of American political rhetoric.) BUT, being a playful person with an interest in sexual matters, I considered the possibility of a world in which boneless could serve as an intersective modifier, in contrast with, oh, boner, a world with boner bananas, stiff and erect, in it, bananas that would have to be deboned for culinary purposes — making still more work for the harried cook. (So: always buy the boneless bananas — unless, of course you have some use for the banana bones (here I choose not to pry)).
The references in this passage.
— AZ on LLog on 2/8/07, “Droning on”, on appositive modification (vs. intersective / restrictive modification) in pilotless drones
— from my 9/4/20 posting “candy-ass faggots”:
extend this [appostive vs. intersective] distinction [for modifying adjectives] to N1 + N2 compounds. The compound pinko Communists (with some history in American poltics) is appositive, conveying something like ‘Communists, who are (after all) pinkos’ [pinko ‘homosexual person’]. While the compound rebel Communists is intersective, conveying something like ‘those Communists who are (also) rebels’.
The pig in #1. Ruth Lawrence is in Australia. But the pig logo on the grocery’s price label —
(#2)
tells us that the grocery store selling those bananas is in the US, because that’s the logo of the Piggly Wiggly supermarkets. From Wikipedia:
Piggly Wiggly is an American supermarket chain operating in the American Southern and Midwestern regions run by Piggly Wiggly, LLC, an affiliate of C&S Wholesale Grocers. Its first outlet opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, and is notable as the first true self-service grocery store, and the originator of various familiar supermarket features, such as checkout stands and individual item price marking. … As of 2024, 503 independently owned Piggly Wiggly stores currently operate across 18 states, primarily in smaller cities and towns.
And, unlike the pork chops the stores sell, their bananas are all boneless.
December 19, 2024 at 7:24 am |
Oddly, I had never made the “pinko”=homosexual connection; I always assumed that the term had to do with pink as a lighter shade of red, suggesting a not-fully-committed Communist.