After my recent cartoon posting on legalese, John Lawler was reminded of this cartoon by John Caldwell:
What the two cartoons share is an appeal to an expert in an emergency.
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
Bring in an expert!
August 8, 2014Power Dogs
August 7, 2014Today’s Zippy:
(#1)
The grotesque Power Dogs figure is (of course: this is Bill Griffith’s work) from real life: outside the Power Dogs Inc. fast food place in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore:
(#2)
(On-line reviews of the hot dogs are at best lukewarm.)
In any case, more food phallicity.
Thesaurus play
August 5, 2014Today’s Zippy has our frazzled Pinhead hero reveling in the pleasures of synonyms:
On deploying Roget, see this Language Log posting on thesaurisizing (my preferred form) or thesaurusizing (Mark Liberman’s), with links back to 2004 postings.
The song sparrow
August 3, 2014Today’s revisiting of Calvin and Hobbes:
The song sparrow segues into a bit of kidlore (beloved by campers and scout troops), and that gets Calvin thrown out of the house by his mother.
A lot of kidlore has no traceable history, but this one has an official story.
Keep on Truckee
August 2, 2014Today’s Zippy, back in Dinerville:
(#1)
The diner in question is pretty much instantly identifiable as being in Truckee CA, though Bill Griffith has obscured its full name. In its current incarnation:
(#2)
And there’s a story.
POP goes the taxi
July 31, 2014Yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange:
A POP — phrasal overlap portmanteau — combining the clipped compound mani-pedi (a manicure plus a pedicure; see here) and the compound pedicab ‘pedal-operated taxi’.
More Zippy playful morphology
July 30, 2014Yesterday’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.
toast
July 29, 2014A recently reprinted Calvin and Hobbes:
The strip exploits the ambiguity of toast as a noun (delightfully, to my mind). But, astonishingly, the two nouns (though clearly quite distinct in modern English, as are the corresponding verbs) have a common historical source. The tale is one of those stories that might make you believe in any damn fanciful etymology.
Willy-Nilly
July 25, 2014Today’s Zippy, with the recurrent theme of nostalgia for dead tree media:
Much to appreciate here, including “the artist known as William Shakespeare” (featuring Baby Huey) and Latvia invading New Jersey (both Baby Huey and Latvia appear every so often in Zippy the Pinhead). And in the last panel, a dead tree comic strip called Willy-Nilly.