Today’s Zippy, with a cartoon transformation:
The three Dingburgers admiring Little Zippy (already cartoon characters) become more and more like cartoon characters, more cartoonish, more cartoony: bigger eyes, bigger ears, longer noses.
Today’s Zippy, with a cartoon transformation:
The three Dingburgers admiring Little Zippy (already cartoon characters) become more and more like cartoon characters, more cartoonish, more cartoony: bigger eyes, bigger ears, longer noses.
Posted in Cartoon conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Playful morphology | Leave a Comment »
From Andras Kornai, a link on my Facebook timeline, tagged as “for Mr. Alexander Adams”: a Schwa Fire piece, “The Name on the Cup: Brewing the Perfect Coffeenym” by Greg Uyeno. About choosing a name for ordering in a coffee shop with lots of background noise. A related task is choosing a name for making reservations over the phone (I have a small amount of local fame in some circles for using Alexander Adams as a reservation name.)
Then there’s Uyeno’s playful coinage coffeenym.
Posted in Combining forms, Derivation, Names, Perception, Playful morphology, Psychology of language | Leave a Comment »
In television commercials that recently came past me: yummify (and more) in a 5-hour ENERGY commercial; and waffulicious in an IHOP commercial.
Posted in Derivation, Language in advertising, Libfixes, Playful morphology, Portmanteaus | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday’s Zippy:
Another chapter in Zippy’s playful morphology, notably with -ity: seriosity and goofiosity. (The names Mrs. Decaf and Mr. Groundnuts are a bonus.) The laughter uh-hyuk is true cartoonish Goofiness: a quote from the Disney character Goofy.
Posted in Derivation, Linguistics in the comics, Playful morphology | Leave a Comment »
Today’s Zits, with jocular morphology and some (Wurst-style) phallicity as well:
Jeremy for Weenie World!
Then there’s dorkage.
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Phallicity, Playful morphology | 1 Comment »
Today’s goofy Zippy:
A grab-bag of stuff here, beyond the 60s clothes: the playful coolth (which has been around for some time) and Clauditude (certainly special to Zippy); the punning allusion to John Donne’s “Ask not for whom the bells toll; they toll for thee”; and the extra language play in the title, on polyester.
Eleganza Fashions (aka African Eleganza Fashions) is still in business, but in much reduced form; its Facebook page says it’s located at
2045 University Blvd #4 (BEHIND DUNKIN DONUTS), Hyattsville, Maryland
Posted in Clothing, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Playful morphology, Quotations | 1 Comment »
Today’s Zippy, which incorporates the comic-within-the-comic, Fletcher and Tanya:
F&T is a recurrent feature in Zippy. It’s a masterpiece of (Gricean) irrelevance, in which the conversational partners flagrantly talk past one another. What each of them says is grammatical English, though often peculiar in content. But the exchanges don’t cohere at all.
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Names, Nonsense, Playful morphology, Pragmatics, Relevance, Semantics | 2 Comments »
Today’s Zippy, on the origin of humor:
Bill Griffith is fond of playful morphology: here, humorology ‘the study of humor’ and humorologist, plus humorosity ‘humorousness’.
Posted in Humor, Linguistics in the comics, Playful morphology, Silliness | 2 Comments »
From Benita Bendon Campbell, this reminiscence of a moment during her time in Paris with Ann Daingerfield Zwicky, many years ago:
Ann and I and aother friend were having afternoon tea at our local café on the Boulevard Saint Germain. The patron and patronne had just acquired a German shepherd puppy named Rita. In French, a German shephejrd is “un berger allemand.” Our friend remarked that Rita must be “une bergère allemande” — or a Gereman shepherdess. That is funny in French as well as in English. (The correct form is “une femelle berger allemand.” The name of the breed is invariable.)
Bonnie’s sketch of une bergère allemande:

Posted in Agreement, Derivation, Gender, Grammatical categories, Inflection, Language play, Morphology, Playful morphology | 3 Comments »
This fine New Yorker cartoon by Arnie Levin, sent to me by Sally Page Byers and Amanda Walker (along with an X-rated composition by Pierre et Gilles and an X-rated photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans; posting on Tillmans on AZBlogX, here):
A play on the proverbial “An elephant never forgets”.
Posted in Ambiguity, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Memory, Playful morphology, Proverbs, Social life | 1 Comment »
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