Archive for the ‘Language play’ Category
April 24, 2018
Yesterday’s Zippy had a nutjob in a diner ranting:
Are you trying to lure me into a lexicographical, self-contradicting black hole of word play so heinous it defies logic?
And today, embedded within a thick matrix of allusions pointing in many directions:
a lexicographical, self-contradicting vortex so heinous, it defies Robert Mueller
(#1)
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Posted in Idioms, Language and food, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Parody, Pop culture, Quotations, Toys and games | Leave a Comment »
April 7, 2018
This New Scientist cartoon by Tom Gauld:

Five nominals of the form N1 of Mod N2. The first panel has the model for the other four: the metaphorical idiom family fount of all N2, where N2 refers to a kind of information. The last four are somewhat snide plays on this original. In effect, the cartoon supplies a template for generating fresh — in two senses — metaphorical idiom families on the basis of an attested one.
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Posted in Count & mass, Eggcorns, Idioms, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Sarcasm and irony | Leave a Comment »
April 4, 2018
From Aric Olnes a while back, a 5/31/17 piece from Hint Magazine, “Weird & Wonderful Men’s Underwear Ads”:
Hilarious and ridiculous, sure, but some of these vintage men’s underwear ads are downright hunky — they just take a little adjusting…
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Posted in Captions, Fashion, Language in advertising, Language play, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
April 4, 2018
A vulgar but entertaining cartoon passed around on Facebook without attribution. Then I found this version with a source:

(Unfortunately, the source was PMSLweb (‘piss myself laughing’) The Internet Scavengers from 10/4/16 — a aggregation site for tasteless jokes. So we don’t actually know anything about the source.)
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Posted in Ambiguity, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 1 Comment »
April 3, 2018
xkcd #1904 Research Risks (10/18/17):
(#1
Linguistics fares pretty well, both on being used by supervillains for world domination and on the possibility of research subjects breaking free and threatening the environment. I note the absence of Artificial Intelligence in this graph.
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Posted in Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Names | 1 Comment »
April 1, 2018
A bit of clever cartoon humor created by Michael Babich for the Google+ community UX/UI Design (and posted on Facebook):

A play on the icons used on computer platforms for various ways of displaying information, likening the shape of the icons to the shape of kinds of food (a hamburger, döner kebab on a vertical rotisserie, a bento box, a kebab on a stick, meatballs). And exploiting the ambiguity of the noun menu — in its older sense in a food context and in a metaphorical sense in computing.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Language and food, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Technology | 1 Comment »