Archive for the ‘Slogans’ Category
March 24, 2025
[Sexual acts discussed in street language, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest]
No, not like my excellent TeePublic DEI t-shirt —
(#1) A shout-out for diversity, equity, and inclusion
but a different sort of DEI t-shirt, one with a double entendre invoked on it, like this one in my 3/22 posting “Put a red apple in that mouth”:
(#2) A Double Entendre Invoking t-shirt: the slogan I like it spit roasted with the outline of a pig: innocently claiming that the wearer likes — that is, likes to eat — spit-roasted pork (with it referring to pig / pork); but raunchily suggesting the sexual act of spitroasting, conveying that the wearer likes — that is, likes to experience — that sexual act (with it referring to the activity), much like saying I like it bareback
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Posted in Ambiguity, Clothing, Double entendres, Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, Metaphor, Slogans | 2 Comments »
October 20, 2024
Wayles Browne writes from Cornell:
you might spare a posting for Jacob Wackernagel, the Swiss philologist, who was the first to make sense of second-position clitics (https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/270), born 11 December 1852; and for Jost Winteler, the other Swiss philologist and author of Die Kerenzer Mundart des Kantons Glarus in ihren Grundzügen dargestellt (1876), who may or may not have been a predecessor of phonemic theory, but who definitely was a mentor to young Albert Einstein after the latter moved to Switzerland. Winteler was born 21 November 1846.
This is that posting, First, I have added Wackernagel (12/11/1852) and Winteler (11/21/1846) to my e-calendar.
Then, from my reply to WB:
I used to be an authority on second-position clitics, even have a t-shirt that says PUT YOUR CLITICS IN SECOND POSITION.
As for Winteler, Canton Glarus is where the Zwickys come from — mostly from Mollis.
Meanwhile, I happen to be wearing my Swiss-flag gym shorts. Hail, Helvetica! and all that.
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Posted in Books, Clitics, Clothing, Holidays, Linguists, Slogans, Switzerland and Swiss things | Leave a Comment »
September 14, 2024
Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro — Wayno’s title: “Forestry Union Negotiations” — plays with the homophones bear and bare in a fresh way, turning on the fact that Smokey the Bear (in those American public service ads for fire safety) is in fact a National Park Service ranger (who happens also to be a talking bear), and so would be required to dress in ranger garb:
(#1) The cartoon, in which Smokey appears on duty with his shovel for fighting fires, but regrettably bare: sans hat and (AmE) pants — also shirt and boots (regulation NPS wear is a gray shirt and green pants) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page)
Now: a little background on Smokey, followed by some other playing with bear and bare. (By the way, though these are homophones for many English speakers, including most Americans, there are English varieties in which they are distinct — but quite close phonetically, so the word play still works just fine.)
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Posted in Abbreviation, Ambiguity, Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and animals, Language and food, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Male art, Photography, Slogans | 1 Comment »
April 1, 2024
That’s what the fuzzy sign said that was being passed around on Facebook, in appreciation of its unintended ambiguity: it’s supposed to be exhorting us to oppose hate (with noun hate), but it could be telling us to do our hating on our feet (with verb hate); consider some parallels in which the N and V readings are pulled apart:
Stand Up To Hatred [N reading] OR Stand Up To Execrate [V reading, with understood object]
Stand Up To Yelling [N] OR Stand Up To Yell [(intransitive) V]
Stand Up To Urination [N] OR Stand Up To Urinate [ (intransitive) V]
I’ll look at the ambiguity in detail in a little while. But first some words about slogans, like the one on that fuzzy sign.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Clothing, Constructions, Emoji, Lexical semantics, Semantics, Signage, Slogans, Slogans, Syntax | Leave a Comment »
June 12, 2023
(Like Mary, Queen of Scots, I am not dead yet — but my right hand barely works because the finger joints are seized up so terribly I can’t straighten the fingers, and painfully swollen, and I am mightily pissed; had to apply ice packs at dusk yesterday, when the air pressure went way low and the pain got intolerable. This is, blessedly, a brief posting with not much typing to do.)
Max Vasilatos on Facebook on 6/10, with a smiling selfie:
(#1) Max’s header: “Breakfast of champions” — Twizzlers (twists of licorice-like candy, in various flavors) as a guilty pleasure, possibly even for breakfast
The Wiktionary entry for breakfast of champions:
(ironic) Beer, junk food, or other foods implied to be unhealthy. ETYMOLOGY Originally an advertising slogan for Wheaties breakfast cereal. Used ironically in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions to refer to a martini.
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Posted in Blends, Language and food, Names, Sarcasm and irony, Slogans | Leave a Comment »
July 29, 2022
O pickle, my love / What a beautiful pickle you are!
Blame it on Nancy Friedman (@Fritinancy on Twitter), who took us down to the pickle plant in Santa Barbara on 7/18, citing these 5 delights, with their label descriptions:
Unbeetables (pickled beets with unbeatable heat) – pun on unbeatable
Carriots of Fire (pickled carrots to light your torch) – punning allusion to the film Chariots of Fire
¡Ay Cukarambas! (dill-icious spicy dill pickle spears) – complex portmanteau of the American Spanish exclamation ¡ay caramba! and the noun cuke ‘cucumber’
Asparagusto (pickled asparagus with a kick) – portmanteau of asparagus and gusto
Bread & Buddhas (semi-sweet bread & butter pickles) – pun on bread and butter (pickles)
(#1)
Pickles are automatically phallicity territory, and the Pacific Pickle Works in Santa Barbara CA (website here) doesn’t shy away from their penis potential, augmenting it by references to phallic carrots, asparagus spears, and unpickled cucumbers. If you have the eye for it, we all live in Penis Town.
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Posted in Alliteration, Double entendres, Language and food, Language in advertising, Language play, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Poetry, Portmanteaus, Puns, Rhyme, Slogans, Taboo language and slurs | 1 Comment »
July 16, 2022
Today’s Zippy strip takes us to triple Dinerland in Rockford MI (as it was before it closed in 2011), in a celebration of the rule of three — a narrative principle that favors trios of events or characters in all sorts of contexts:
(#1) The Three Musketeers (in the Dumas novel and the movies), the Three Little Pigs (vs. the Big Bad Wolf in the fable), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (the 1966 epic spaghetti Western), and the Three Stooges (the vaudeville and slapstick comedy team best known for their 190 short films)
The rule of three in a little while, but first, the diners of Rockford MI (a town of a few thousand people about 10 miles north of Grand Rapids).
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Posted in Diners, Jokes, Linguistics in the comics, Narrative, Slogans, Snowclones | 4 Comments »
July 13, 2022
(What can I say? There will be dipsticks and dipshits, so eventually this posting will be at best borderline for kids and the sexually modest.)
News commentator explains that in citing the slogan
You can pay me now, or pay me later. (the pay-me slogan)
the day before, he’d attributed it to the wrong advertiser, adding that the right one was FRAM oil filters. The slogan conveying that you can pay some money now for a good oil filter — or you’ll pay more later when your car breaks down (though of course with wider applicability, conveying at least that you can pay for prevention, or you’ll have to pay more for the remedy).
And then added with a big grin that FRAM was also responsible for the slogan
The dipstick tells the story. (the dipstick slogan)
conveying that you should check the dipstick regularly (and change the oil when it looks dirty) and serving more generally as an exhortation to monitor the state of any important mechanism regularly — in particular, using the sexual slang dipstick ‘penis’, as urging men to check their dicksticks regularly to make sure they’re in working order.
The dipstick slogan came first, 80 years ago. By thirty years into its career, the slang uses of dipstick (for both ‘penis’ and ‘fool, stupid or incompetent person; obnoxious person’) were spreading, so FRAM switched to the pay-me slogan, which is much harder to raunch up (but not impossible, in a world in which high-end prostitutes, of both sexes, accept payment by credit card).
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Posted in Etymology, Language in advertising, Masculinity, Metaphor, Semantics of compounds, Slogans | 2 Comments »
March 11, 2022
Some riffing on yesterday’s posting “Catchphrases for sale”, about this Zippy strip:
(#1) Offering fresh phrases — not already in circulation as catchphrases, sayings, proverbs, slogans, famous quotations, well-known names and titles, and the like — chosen at random
Zippy’s fresh phrases sound like catchphrases — roughly, free-standing expressions that you recognize as coming from a stock of quotations widely known in your culture, which then (if you wish) can be conventionally used to make some point — but are in fact novel. The things called catchphrases are then exquisitely embedded in particular cultures (note: “widely known in your culture” and also “can be conventionally used”).
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Posted in Catchphrases, Clichés, Formulaic language, Holidays, Humor, Language and medicine, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Nonsense, Poetry, Proverbs, Psychology, Slogans | 1 Comment »
November 21, 2021
Grant Barrett (of the Barnette-Barrett radio show A Way with Words — and a real lexicographer, one of the lexicographers I sometimes hang out with, even though I’m not of that tribe) tried to post this as a comment on my posting yesterday, “Now we’re cooking with carrots”, but it appears to have been indigestible to WordPress, so I’m publishing it here as a guest posting. Remember: what follows below the line is Grant, all Grant, not me (except for some formatting).
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Posted in Formulaic language, Language of advertising, Lexicography, Pop culture, Slogans, Snowclones | 2 Comments »
