Archive for the ‘Language play’ Category
December 20, 2024
Briefly noted.
Previously on this blog. In my 12/18 posting “Doctor The Who”,
a portmanteau title — Doctor Who + The Who = Doctor The Who — for a hybrid cartoon character, who is simultaneously Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor Who and also the leaping, jumping Pete Townshend of the rock band The Who:
I referred to this Bizarro cartoon on Facebook as Tommy and the Doctor, referring to the Who’s rock opera Tommy, with Pete Townshend in the title role, and to Doctor Who, and making a sly filmic allusion, which Dennis Lewis caught on Facebook
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Posted in Actors, Language play, Movies and tv, My life | 2 Comments »
December 18, 2024
For today’s Bizarro, a portmanteau title — Doctor Who + The Who = Doctor The Who [with the overlapping material underlined] — for a hybrid cartoon character, who is simultaneously Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor Who and also the leaping, jumping Pete Townshend of the rock band The Who:
(#1) Wayno’s character is, in appearance and dress, Baker’s Doctor Who; but this character is also, in action, Townshend’s hyperactive guitarist in The Who (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
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Posted in Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Pop culture, Portmanteaus, Puns | 3 Comments »
November 28, 2024
(Not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)
Ok, one more little posting before I tackle writing about the last week in my life, parts of which were spectacularly awful, but through most of which I coped admirably and in good spirits, I don’t know why or how. This simultaneously disastrous and miraculous week ended with my delicious Thanksgiving dinner, of Korean soy and black vinegar chicken on japchae, a last-minute replacement for the long-planned Mexican homestyle pozole, which had to be shelved when the cook was incapacitated. Details to come.
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Posted in Gay porn, Idioms, Language of sex, Language play, My life, Puns | 1 Comment »
November 27, 2024
(Men’s bodies and man-on-man sex, discussed bluntly, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)
On Pinterest this morning, this painting by Polish queer artist Wojciech Woś (now working in Berlin):
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Posted in Art, Color, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, Lexical semantics, Male art, Phonetics, Polish, Spelling | Leave a Comment »
November 18, 2024
The Bizarro of 11/11, about birthday presents in Batworld: Selina Kaye (in her alter ego as Catwoman, where she is both woman and cat) and Dick Grayson (in his alter ego as Robin, where he’s a boy named Robin, and not a bird) grouse about the presents they receive — probably from Bruce Wayne (in his alter ego as Batman) — by virtue of their creature-name aliases:
(#1) Selina gets cat presents, but at least her alter ego is a hybrid of cat and woman; but Dick gets worms (because the bird the robin is famously fond of eating them) even though there’s nothing avian about his alter ego (not even his name, which is a diminutive of the name Robert), so he is no doubt doubly pissed off — Wayno’s title for the strip is the ironic “Thanks a lot, Bruce” (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)
As it happens, the proper name Robin is historically not unconnected to the common noun robin, but the connection runs the wrong way: the noun robin comes from the name Robin. As far as modern English is concerned, robin and Robin are just unrelated homophones, so giving Robin birthday worms because of his name is like giving Peter and Dick birthday condoms because of their names; it embodies a (crude) pun.
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Posted in Common vs. proper, Linguistics in the comics, Names, Puns | 2 Comments »
November 18, 2024
The 11/12 Piccolo / Price Rhymes With Orange strip takes us to the Merriam-Webster company gym, where the lexicographers get defined:
(#1) It’s pun day at the definition factory, with bodybuilders’ definition punning on lexicographers’ definition
Confronted with a pun strip, I’ll usually go on to cite definitions from NOAD (or similar sources) for the punning expression and its model, and I’ll do a version of that here, getting at the expression well-defined by starting from the verb define, going on to the adjective defined (modified by the degree adverbial well ‘thoroughly’ in well-defined), and then steaming on to the noun definition and the conceptually related verbs cut and shred.
But what I find on this little trip has nothing at all from the vocabulary of bodybuilding. Not in NOAD, where I start (because I can access this dictionary on my computer with a few keystrokes); not in the OED (no surprise; its on-line version for this vocabulary is still antique); not — oh wonderful irony — in the on-line Merriam-Webster; not in AHD5; and not (to my astonishment) in GDoS. So for the bodybuilding vocabulary, I’ve cobbled together definitions from various bodybuilding sources. But apparently bodybuilding is so esoteric a world that its vocabulary has not yet reached mainstream lexicography. (A surprise to me. I’m not part of the bodybuilding world, but I have, yes, bodybuilder friends, also friends who are into bodybuilding competitions, and friends who have a taste for bodybuilders; and meanwhile, the gay male world and the world of physique magazines have long been intertwined, so I’m familiar with the bodybuilding world.)
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Posted in Homosexuality, Language and the body, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Linguists, Puns, Sociolinguistics | Leave a Comment »
November 15, 2024
Very briefly noted.
Passed on back on 11/9 by Michael Palmer on Facebook, this fine reworking of the map of Austria as an ostrich:
MP came across it on the Language Nerds Facebook site, but I don’t know who created the image in the first place
In English, Austria (a Latinization of the German name Österreich ‘eastern realm’) and ostrich (from a compound of the Latin avi- stem meaning ‘bird’ and the Greek struth– stem meaning ‘ostrich, big sparrow’) have only medial /str/ as clearly shared material, so are very distant puns, if they count as puns at all. Much the same is true of Spanish Austria and avestruz. Things are even more distant in Italian (Austria and struzzo) and of course German (Österreich and Strauß).
But in French, as I pointed out on Facebook, by the accidents of phonological change, Latinized Austria > Autriche and the avi– + struth– compound > autruche, yielding a truly fine pun: Autriche is an autruche!
So Austria not only looks like an ostrich, in French it sounds like one too. This makes me happy.
Posted in Art, Compounds, French, German, Greek, Language and animals, Language change, Latin, Placenames, Puns, Spanish | 3 Comments »
November 9, 2024
… and, instead of taking the Zzyzx exit, catches a ride with a guy in a SYZYGY car to the end of the road, where one-point perspective takes you (so we are both out in the desert in San Bernardino County CA; and also in the artist’s meta-world, where perspective lines converge in a vanishing point, and that is truly the end of the road). All this in yesterday’s Zippy strip, which is rich in Z, Y, ZY / ZI, and ZYG. plus the occasional antic X:
(#1) Three things: Zzyzx Road; one-point perspective; and the word SYZYGY (the ZYG of which took my mind to the word ZYGOTE; while the concept of syzygy took me to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is a wedding-feast of syzygy — of counterparts, contrasts, conflicts, and oppositions)
And then there’s zig; from NOAD:
noun zig: a sharp change of direction in a zigzag course: he went round and round in zigs and zags.
(which can then be verbed to yield to zig ‘to take a zig’, as in my title)
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Posted in Art, Assonance, Comic conventions, Etymology, Language of sex, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Names, Opposition, Placenames, Semantics, Spelling | 1 Comment »
November 6, 2024
From Ryan Tamares on Facebook this morning, this mock ad (whose ultimate source is unclear to me), posted in response to Grabpussy’s electoral victory, with the laconic comment: Need.
References in the ad: the tag “I’m a doctor, (Jim,) not a …” (later expanded to “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a …”) comes from various incarnations of Star Trek, first used in The Original Series by Dr. Leonard McCoy (played by DeForest Kelley); the ad’s centerpiece is the name Dammit Gin, punning on Dammit, Jim
And then there’s Ryan’s message, one of many today from people saying they’ll take the edge off the electoral disaster and the unpleasant future it portends by taking refuge, for the moment, in drink. After which we’ll all have to get on with the task of protecting what we can and resisting the tide of fear and anger that’s washing in.
Somewhat to my astonishment, I’m not tempted to be taking a ride on the gin train, for reasons I will now explain.
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Posted in Allusion, Language and food, My life, Puns | Leave a Comment »
October 30, 2024
(Publicity for a gay porn video, entertaining in its way but absolutely off-limits for kids and the sexually modest)
🎃 🎃 🎃 three jack-o’-lanterns for penultimate October, Halloween Eve (that is, the day before the day before the day of the dead) — in my house, the day when the pussyboys go out to seek their phallic prey
Into this scene comes this morning’s e-mail from the Falcon | NakedSword Store, offering:
Hot House movie download discounts — full movies $11.95 each
With, right at the top, the crudely pun-titled video Swim Meat and its cover illustration, offering four fine pieces of swim meat, one (Johnny V’s) just barely concealed by his swimwear; plus three proudly jutting tubesteaks that I’ve had to suppress for WordPress modesty (but here you can view the uncensored cover, along with the publicity text):
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Posted in Compounds, Discourse organization, Gay porn, Holidays, Hyperbole, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, Lexical semantics, Metaphor, Puns, Semantics of compounds, Style and register, Taboo language and slurs | 1 Comment »
