In the 11/7 One Big Happy, Joe searches for an antonym, an opposite, and once again creatively “goes into” a word to supply the opposite:
Previously: in #2 in my 11/21 posting “OBH analyses”, Joe came up with yesbody as the opposite of nobody.
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
uncle-o-nym
December 5, 2018Wok it to the golden Lab for analysis, har-de-har-har
December 3, 20183 x 3: three cartoons of linguistic interest for the 3rd of December: a Dave Blazek Loose Parts with merged phonemes; a Wayno/Piraro Bizarro with an ambiguity; and a Zits with an onomatopoeia.
Annals of everyday objects: the garlic press
December 2, 2018In a continuing series about (mostly useful) everyday objects, back to the kitchen, where today I needed some fresh garlic for an Indian dish of brown rice, dal, and vegetable bits with curry spices (a Penzey’s “balti mix”), so I resorted to the household’s (aluminum) garlic press.
A seasonal groaner
December 1, 2018A terrible Xmas pun committed by Scott Hilburn in a 12/23/13 cartoon (hat tip to Mike Reaser):
(No ‘L’ – Noel)
I figure this is fair game, since tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent, putting us into the religious Christmas season broadly understood. (Then Wednesday is Krampusnacht, and Thursday is St. Nicholas Day).
OBH information
November 29, 2018Two One Big Happy strips that appeared in my comics feed recently: from 10/31 (Halloween), with Joe displaying information about tv shows; and from 11/1, with Ruthie displaying molluscular information she has gleaned:
(#1)
(#2)
A grotesque word
November 29, 2018Tuesday’s Zippy:
(#1)
Another chapter in word attraction: Zippy’s (and Griffy’s) enjoyment of “funny words”. Here, gargoyle, which Zippy, absurdly, analyzes as a compound of the nouns gar (referring to a kind of sharp-toothed fish) and goyle (a rare, mostly dialectal, term for a deep trench) — so, roughly ‘fish ravine’. Turns out the actual etymology of gargoyle is entertaining enough on its own.
What do you have?
November 25, 2018The One Big Happy from October 12th, a dialogue between Joe and James in which we experience a tiny bit of the fabulous flexibility of the English verb have:
(#1)
James seems not to have registered the noun hobby (‘an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure’ (NOAD)) and so takes hobbies in have hobbies to be the name of a disease, infection, or medical condition, like (the) mumps. For him, chickenpox and the mumps, but not hobbies is just an ordinary coordination, but for the rest of us, it’s prime-grade zeugma, like (I had) asthma and artistic inclinations — with the extra wrinkle that though both chickenpox and mumps end in a plural-resembling /s/ (and so superficially resemble the PL hobbies), both are grammatically SG:
chickenpox / (the) mumps once was / *were a common childhood disease, but vaccines have nearly eliminated it / *them [SG for subject-verb agreement and also for anaphor selection]
Two notes: on the morphosyntax of disease names; and on the extraordinary versatility of have (which just invites zeugmas and zeugmoids).
A fantasy exercise in cartoon understanding
November 22, 2018In the latest (11/26/18) New Yorker, this Ali Solomon cartoon presents a test in cartoon understanding:
(#1) “Oh yes. Definitely a forgery. Hope it didn’t cost you much.”
If you recognize the loin-clothed hunkering figure with the big eyes, you’ll understand what’s happening in the cartoon and why it’s funny. Otherwise, it’s just baffling.
Giving thanks with Roz Chast
November 22, 2018A Roz Chast New Yorker cartoon from 11/22/10, “The Last Thanksgiving” — how could I possibly please them all? — and now her cover for the latest (11/26/18) New Yorker, “Thankfulness”, for the Technology Issue of the magazine.
OBH analyses
November 21, 2018Two recent One Big Happy strips in which the analysis of words into parts plays a role: one from 10/14 with a Ruthian eggcorn (treating archive as ark + hive); and one from 10/23 in which Joe puzzles over the consequences of appreciating that nobody is no + body.