Well, yeah, a spoiler. But the title should make you wonder how Stephan Pastis manages to weave together the whole setup / payoff formula pun in today’s (9/13) Pearls Before Swine strip. Here it comes:
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
Goat and beaver
September 4, 2026Two absurdist anthropomorphized animal cartoons from the latest New Yorker (of 9/7/26, the Dolly Parton issue): Jared Nangle’s beaver resolutely doing what it’s programmed to do; and Joe Dator’s mountain goat trying to take a NYC cab to the nearest precipice.
Edible primate
September 4, 2026
Santa Maria! La Piña!
September 2, 2026Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro offers a pun using the available resources sparingly: piñata coladas — piña coladas as made by (anthropomorphized) piñatas:
Helpfully, with a recipe (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)
A pun of impossibility
August 29, 2026Also 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)
Mental blocks
August 25, 2026
A gross hybrid
August 20, 2026The 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.
Yesterday’s metromanteau
August 13, 2026The 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:
Crazed lunatic, ax murderer
August 7, 2026Stephan 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
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)
