Archive for the ‘Language play’ Category
June 3, 2018
Available in a number of designs on the net:
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From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s “Ambiguity” entry (edited by Adam Sennet, first published 5/16/11, last substantive revision 2/8/16):
Fun fact: the word ‘ambiguous’, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is ambiguous between two main types of meaning: uncertainty or dubiousness on the one hand and a sign bearing multiple meanings on the other. I mention this merely to disambiguate what this entry is about, which concerns a word or phrase enjoying multiple meanings.
In the technical literature on these things, the first notion is known as (among other things) vagueness, while the second is known as (linguistic) ambiguity. Ouch.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Catchphrases, Context, Figurative language, Formulaic language, Masculinity, Puns, Semantics, Snowclones, Technical and ordinary language | Leave a Comment »
June 1, 2018
It’s been a while since I posted chiastic (transpositional, Spooneristic) wordplay, so here’s a Bizarro from 12/16/08:
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The title To Kill a Mockingbird –> To Mock a Killingbird by transposition (exchange, reversal), of kill and mock (the sort of exchange seen in Spoonerisms as inadvertent errors). Formally of interest because the process “goes into” a compound word, to affect one of its parts (mocking), and also into an affixed word, to affect its base (mock). On the conceptual side, this particular kind of wordplay is shallow, thin, since only one of the two paired situations is represented in the cartoon: having served its purpose as base for transposition, the book To Kill a Mockingbird plays no further role in the proceedings.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Books, Chiasmus, Errors, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Word exchanges / reversals | 1 Comment »
May 28, 2018
(About gay porn, but not wildly racy. Edgy for kids and the sexually modest.)
On the 26th, about the Lucas gay porn sale for Memorial Day 2018: “Memorial mansex” on AZBlogX; and “Porn for the holidays, with narrowed eyes” on this blog, about offering gay porn for various holidays (for Memorial Day as a cultural celebration of summer, in particular), and about interpreting narrowed eyes and drooping eyes.
Now, in “More Memorial mansex” on AZBlogX today, two more gay porn ads for the holiday: one from TitanMen featuring Liam Knox; and one from Dirk Yates featuring Rod Peterson. Here I’ll pick up some themes from those ads: from the Titan, Knox’s tats, and what tats convey; from the DY, a note on palming off pros as amateurs, plus reality vs. fiction and the playful invention new cummer.
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Posted in Fiction, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language play, Pragmatics, Semantics, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
May 22, 2018
(Semen is a theme, and, eventually, sexual practices involving semen, so some readers might want to exercise caution.)
Today’s taboo avoidance story, brought to my attention by Ben Zimmer, who provided a link to [UNN] (an unnamed national newspaper that lies behind a paywall for me, so I now lie behind a citewall for them; in this case, it seems to have broken the story), here as reported in today’s Daily Beast story “Publix Censors ‘Summa Cum Laude’ on Graduation Cake Order”:
(#1) The cumless cake
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language play, Taboo language and slurs | 5 Comments »
May 13, 2018
(Only the first image — daddy and boy in sexual medias res — is problematic; but it’s probably over the line for Facebook these days, and it might be for you too, even though it’s penisless. The penises are in an AZBlogX posting “Gay butterflies”, in three mansex collages with word play and butterflies.)
It started with a visual re-run yesterday in “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar”:
A collage of mine (from my 10/21/16 posting “Another Spanish lesson”, with a Daddy / Boy scene illustrating el papá taking charge of the body of his boy:
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Posted in Collages, Language and food, Language and plants, Language play, Movies and tv, Music, Rainbow, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
May 6, 2018
(from the annals of remarkable company names and the Index Paranomasiarum)
For Naked Gardening Day (today and every May 6th), this shot of a landscaping company in the Miami area:
If Christian Gray is out on call, Marquis De Sod will discipline you — work you over in raunchy verdure under the fierce Florida sun. They will bind you, edge you, train you, hold you back until tomorrow, when they will allow you the release of Masturbation Day.
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Names, Puns, Silliness, Trade names | Leave a Comment »
May 6, 2018
Trying to recover the name of a deodorant I’d once used, I went on a Google search and immediately pulled up the Balding Beards site — they offer to put you on a mailing list for manly products — with its piece “The Top 10 Best Deodorants and Antiperspirants for Men” by Domen Hrovatin on 4/13/18. Three of the choices — all new to me — have memorable names: Primal Pit Paste Natural Deodorant (/p/-alliteration, and of course, rough, hairy, manly pits — women have underarms, men have armpits, or just pits); Forest by Herban Cowboy (major pun groan, at least for AmE speakers, for whom urban and herban are homophonous; plus those stone-butch cowboys and the masculine scent of the woods); and Jack Black Pit Boss (rhyming Jack Black, all tough monosyllables, plus the image of a tough casino pit boss, and, once again, pit).
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Posted in Language and the body, Masculinity, Names, Puns, Trade names | Leave a Comment »
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