Archive for the ‘Catchphrases’ Category
January 21, 2020
On Facebook recently, this supermarket snap, presumably from a store in Quebec, with a notable offering highlighted:
(#1) Five parts to the labeling: the name of the product in French (ailes de lapin); the name of the company (Canabec, a Quebec distributor of game — gibiers — and exotic meats; cf. elsewhere Plaisirs Gastronomiques, a Quebec company offering gourmet food, and Gaspésien, another Quebec fine food company); the name of the product in English (rabbit wings); the weight (in grams); and the price (in C$ / CA$ / CAD)
Much FB merriment over ailes de lapin ‘rabbit wings’, to which I responded:
Um, these are rabbit legs, right? Metaphorical? They resemble chicken wings and can be cooked in all the same ways. (Chinese rabbit wings are yummy.) M. Lapin: “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! for then I would fly away, and be at rest.” (Psalm 55) — later adding: “Oh, that I had wings like a rabbit! for then I would bound away, and be at rest.”
It’s a metaphor, son! A metaphor! Apparently one that is dead in Quebec, and so unremarkable in Quebecois — cf. Fr chauve-souris ‘bat’ (lit. ‘bald mouse’), Engl head of lettuce (where are its eyes and mouth?), and other dead metaphors that become entertaining when you attempt to breathe life back into them.
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Posted in Catchphrases, French, Language and food, Mascots, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Silliness | 3 Comments »
August 13, 2019
(Regularly skirting or confronting sexual matters, so perhaps not to everyone’s taste.)
Yesterday’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro takes us back to the Garden of Eden:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
The bit of formulaic language for this situation is a catchphrase, a slogan with near-proverbial status (YDK, for short):
YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE IT’S BEEN
The leaves are conventionally associated with modesty, through their having been used to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve in the Garden — a use that then associates the leaves with the genitals, from which the psychological contamination spreads to the entire plant, including the fruits. You don’t know where that fig has been.
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Posted in Catchphrases, Culture, Formulaic language, Idioms, Language and the body, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Pragmatics, Proverbs, Slogans, Speech acts | Leave a Comment »
August 4, 2019
In today’s NYT Magazine (in print), a Jason Parham comment “This is not a drill”, on a 7/21 (in print) piece by Claudia Rankine, the comment turned into a thumbnail illustration by Giacomo Gambineri:
The Magrittean disavowal Ceci n’est pas une perceuse ‘This is not a drill’ (referring to une perceuse, a device for making — piercing — holes in things), but playing on the English catchphrase This is not a drill, conveying ‘This is the real thing, this is serious’.
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Posted in Art, Catchphrases, Gender and sexuality, Language play, Race and ethnicity, Writers | Leave a Comment »
June 12, 2019
My 6/6 posting “What makes the world go ’round?” looked at the catchphrase, or saying, Love makes the world go ’round, with
comments from the American Dialect Society’s lexicographers John Baker and Peter Reitan tracing the expression, with love as the subject, in several variant forms (including It’s love that makes the world go ’round and ‘Tis love that makes the world go ’round), back to an old song in English (early 19th century at least), and that from an older song in French. Now Peter Reitan has unearthed a late 18th-century playful variation on the formula, in which it’s drink, not love, that makes the world go ’round.
Meanwhile, in the modern world, playful variations have abounded, to the point where it’s reasonable to posit a snowclone X Makes the World, conveying ‘X is very important’.
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Posted in Catchphrases, Formulaic language, Memes, Music, Pop culture, Snowclones | Leave a Comment »
April 4, 2019
In yesterday’s Zippy, the Walking Man — Zippy knows him as Ed Ped — returns to Zippytopia:
(#1)
First theme: Ed used to be otherwise, but now he’s naked, amanous, and apodous: Deal with it! Get over it! Get used to it! We are everywhere.
Second theme: Zippy moves the focus to France, causing Ed to morph into a stereotypical Frenchman (with beret and cigarette, probably Gauloises), who announces Je suis partout ‘I am all over, I am everywhere’.
Side effect: French Ed evokes, in Zippy’s mind, Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor. (Zippy is a wildly associative thinker.)
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Posted in Books, Catchphrases, Formulaic language, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Pragmatics, Semantics, Signs and symbols, Slogans, Snowclones | 1 Comment »
March 17, 2019
(Men’s bodies and tons of mansex — anal, anal, anal — in street language. No actual penises on display, but nevertheless absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Padraig porn for the day:
(#1) The TitanMen gay porn sale for this weekend: Kiss me, I’m Irish
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Posted in Argument structure, Art, Catchphrases, Dance, Facial expressions, Formulaic language, French, Gay porn, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language of sex, Language play, Music, Puns, Snowclones | 1 Comment »
February 14, 2019
Back on 6/4/11, in “Alligator Goodbyes”, a t-shirt with 14 instances
of a verse form that I’ll call the Alligator Goodbye, on the model of “see you later, alligator” (at the top of the shirt):
(#1)
Now, a much bigger assemblage of AGs — 27 of them — on the Language Nerds Facebook page, in b&w:
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Posted in Catchphrases, Formulaic language, Language play, Music, Poetic form, Rhyme | 2 Comments »
December 12, 2018
It’s time for that moving, rousing carol that makes this time of the year so special. I refer of course to the great seasonal song of Okefenokee County, the Pogolicious, Kellytastic “Deck us all with Boston Charlie”:
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Posted in Catchphrases, Clichés, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Nonsense, Parodies | Leave a Comment »
