Archive for the ‘Rhyme’ Category
January 19, 2020
(Eventually, significant talk about the lexicon of men’s genitalia, so not to everyone’s taste.)
From the annals of remarkable commercial names, this name of — surprise!* — a gourmet grocery store in Toronto, in the news recently because it closed after 24 years in business. [* Note: a surprise, of course, only to non-Torontonians; to locals, it’s not only familiar, but semantically unremarkable (see below).]
Two things here: the relatively straightforward playful half-rhyme meat – beach: /mit – bič/, with stop /t/ vs. affricate /č/ (both voiceless coronal obstruents); and the complex playfulness of the name — with possible sexual double entendres involving meat and with the carefree associations of beaches, often evoking sex as well (and giving rise to the cocktail name Sex on the Beach).
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Posted in Figurative language, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language play, Names, Rhyme | 1 Comment »
January 19, 2020
That’s the head:
Rent Spikes
Stoke Dread
By the Sea
The subhead:
Coney Island Businesses
Fear Being Priced Out
The story is that increases in rents have promoted anxiety on the part of seaside business owners on Coney Island.
This from the national print edition of the NYT on the 15th (p. A19), story by Aaron Randle.
A story I have then playfully travestied:
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Posted in Headlines, Music, Parodies, Poetry, Rhyme, Style and register | Leave a Comment »
March 27, 2019
The 2/26 One Big Happy, riffing on /sɛns/, in idioms with sense (common sense, horse sense, nonsense), in incense, and in cents (also in an idiom, two cents):
(#1)
Which, of course, leads us inevitably to the psychedelic days of 1967, with their whiff of incense and peppermints (plus some pot).
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Posted in Dialects, Idioms, Language and culture, Lexicography, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Phonetics, Phonology, Rhyme | 5 Comments »
March 10, 2019
Cue from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky yesterday, to a posting by Sandra Boynton on Facebook on the 7th:
(#1)
Day 5,347 of my quixotic project to entirely redraw my seven earliest board books. I’m doing this so that the line and colors will print better, and the layout is better balanced. I hope. (It’s really very fun, in a hyperfocused sort of way.)
EDZ recommended reading the comments, “for adorable linguistic content”. Indeed: on naming conventions and on the cot/caught merger, among other things.
And then a Boynton for Pi Day, coming up this week (on the 14th). With a celebratory pig for the occasion.
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Posted in Books, Holidays, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Names, Rhyme, Variation | Leave a Comment »
February 14, 2019
Back on 6/4/11, in “Alligator Goodbyes”, a t-shirt with 14 instances
of a verse form that I’ll call the Alligator Goodbye, on the model of “see you later, alligator” (at the top of the shirt):
(#1)
Now, a much bigger assemblage of AGs — 27 of them — on the Language Nerds Facebook page, in b&w:
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Posted in Catchphrases, Formulaic language, Language play, Music, Poetic form, Rhyme | 2 Comments »
November 6, 2017
Came up in a Facebook discussion involving Ann Burlingham and Aric Olnes, the catchphrase in this bit of digital art by Methune Hively:
off like a herd of turtles, referring to a very slow start or to slow progress after an auspicious start – based on the horse-racing announcer’s They’re OFF!, plus the legendary slowness of turtles, with the rhyming play thrown in.
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Posted in Catchphrases, Rhyme | 1 Comment »
August 27, 2017
Yesterday morning, foraging in the Whole Foods around the corner for something to take as a food contribution for the annual Palo Alto all-day shapenote singing (we eventually settled on some truly fine smoked trout — see below), Kim Darnell and I happened to walk past the jerky section of the store — who knew there was such a thing? — where I admired some lamb jerky, and then we discovered, groan, turkey Perky Jerky:
(#1)
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Posted in Language and food, Language in advertising, Language play, Rhyme | Leave a Comment »
July 26, 2017
(Men’s underwear, sexy song lyrics, nicknames, half-rhymes, and more. Some of it raunchy enough to have been banned in Malaysia, but then we’re not in Malaysia, are we?)
(#1)
His name is Mikey Bustos, he’s (self-described) Canadian Filipino, and he rap-sings of skimpy Speedos —
My goods are protected like an armadillo
When I’m in the ocean I feel good emotion
Because all the sand causes some real exfoliation.
and prances in them like a pro.
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Posted in Ethnonyms and demonyms, Gender and sexuality, Music, Names, Nicknames, Parodies, Rhyme | Leave a Comment »
June 7, 2017
Four language-related strips in my comics feed on Sunday the 4th, which this year was Pentecost,
the Christian festival celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus after his Ascension, held on the seventh Sunday after Easter. (NOAD2)
KJV Acts 2:3: And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them
The word came down. In One Big Happy, Rhymes Wth Orange, Zits, and xkcd.
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Idioms, Inflection, Language and plants, Language and religion, Language of advertising, Linguistics in the comics, Morphology, Music, Names, Rhyme, Spelling | 2 Comments »
