Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category

A pun of impossibility

August 29, 2026

Also elegantly minimal. Yesterday’s (8/25) Wayno / Piraro Bizarro cartoon:


An Etch A Sketch drawing of an Escher drawing; /ɛšǝ(r)/ Escher (rhotic for me, not for most BrE speakers) vs. /ɛčǝ/ Etch A, so primarily, fricative vs. affricate at same point of articulation (as in sheep vs. cheap or wish vs. witch) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2  — see this Page)

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Mental blocks

August 25, 2026

The Zippy strip of 8/24:


The answers are: George Costanza and Leonardo da Vinci

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A gross hybrid

August 20, 2026

The Wayno / Piraro Bizarro of today (8/20), depicting a preposterous cartoon event:


It’s a Renaissance Faire and a Ren & Stimpy Show animated cartoon (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

A crossing of the decorously ornamental and the enthusiastically down-and-dirty.

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Yesterday’s metromanteau

August 13, 2026

The Wayno / Piraro 8/12 Bizarro: “The Metromorphosis”:


metro- [the libfix, representing the noun metrosexual] + metamorphosis [the abstract noun meaning ‘transformation’] = metromorphosis ‘transformation to metrosexuality’ (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

Two contributors:

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Crazed lunatic, ax murderer

August 7, 2026

Stephan Pastis’s Pearls Before Swine comic strip for 8/5:


Dating tip: avoid crazed lunatics; and while we’re on the subject, ax murderers too — when on offer in the sexual marketplace, let caution be your watchword

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You all look the same to me

July 29, 2026

(or: they all look …) (or: … all look alike)

In the New Yorker‘s 7/20/26 issue, an Ivan Ehlers cartoon on this theme:


The cross-species effect: to a shark, every non-shark looks the same — looks, in particular, like the most salient non-shark, the shark’s major prey animal the seal; plus, everything is funnier in cartoon SharkWorld (just put a cocktail glass into a shark’s fins)

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The usual slogan

July 25, 2026

(Extensive reference to men’s private parts, occasionally in street speech, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)

From my 7/23 posting “Small worlds”, in an anecdote (from 1990) about my man Jacques and me:

to reverse the usual slogan, [Jacques] treats me as not only a great piece of meat but also as an especially wonderful human being. This is ridiculously sweet. Unrealistic but sweet.

The usual slogan is about men as meat. Some details.

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Mononga Hela!

July 1, 2026

🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit, the sultry bunnies of July! But they are no match for Mononga Hela, the monstrous snake that swallows fat Carnegie melons, prodigious feral boars, and of course entire railway trains whole — the fearsome creature that in popular lore is said to have consumed all of western Pennsylvania in a fit of pique. Mononga Monga Ooga Gila Hellmouth!

But first, the Zippy strip from 6/27:


Beyond spelling: Zippy appreciates the power of the name Monongahela; and of course potrzebie, but the word for the day is Monongahela

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Enjoy your night in Tunisia

June 26, 2026

The Wayno / Piraro Bizarro strip of 6/26:


(#1) He’s a good man, who’ll give you hot licks on his saxophone while lavishing care on your car during your dinner; enjoy your night in Tunisia, light on the harissa (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

A complex joke pun on the name of the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker (Wikipedia entry here), in which the Charlie Brown character from the comic strip Peanuts is presented as a valet parker.

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Two 6/22 cartoons

June 19, 2026

… from  the New Yorker issue of that day: a Liana Finck cartoon on the never-done work of women; and an Ellis Rosen cartoon featuring a fully-accredited monster.

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