Today’s Zippy takes us through three commercial establishments with (variants) of –orama names, while fretting ambivalently about American patriotism:
(#1)
Wein-O-Rama (Cranston RI), Billy’s Burg-O-Rama (Oxford MA), and Liquorama (stores with that name in many locations), plus Zippy’s own coining, Shrink-O-Rama. As it happens, Bill Griffith has used the imagery in #1 for at least one other strip, which I posted on Language Log on 1/20/07:
Today’s Bizarro, in which Mr. Peanut (a registered brand) and Ms. GrapeJella (my invented name), a jar of grape jelly, face off:
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(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
So many ways to combine the grape and the peanut, directly or via their metonymic associates (Ms. GrapeJella and Mr. Peanut) and their metonymic associates (grape jelly and peanut butter); and by combining things or by combining words (more carefully: linguistic expressions denoting those things).
In my e-mail, a nice note from cartoonist Wayno about a type of wordplay that he likes to indulge in, exemplified by this Waynovision cartoon:
(#1)
The title is a portmanteau combination of two overlapping phrases, Checkpoint Charlie and Charlie Parker. And the content of the cartoon involves combining Checkpoint Charlie the place in Berlin and Charlie Parker the jazz saxophonist.
Back in 2011, Wayno mused on his blog about such word play, suggesting the name streptonym for it. On this blog, I’ve used the descriptive label phrasal overlap portmanteau (POP, for short) for such expressions as denoting a hybrid of the referents of the two contributing expressions. So #1 is a Wayno POP.
In the tradition of the quesarito (quesadilla + burrito) comes the quesadoga (quesadilla + (hot)dog), which I learned about on Pinterest yesterday:
(#1) A quesadilla hotdog: quesadilla wrapped around hotdog.
(Men flaunting their junk, codpieces, prehistoric creatures, superheroes, language play, and more. Use your judgment.)
On the 21st, a posting on Cellblock / CellBlock / Cell Block 13 garments, featuring a young man in a commando harness (plus a jockstrap). Then in yesterday’s mail, a Daily Jocks ad with another remarkable CellBlock 13 costume (plus my caption):
(#1) X-Wing Harness and X-treme Hybrid Short, in red
Vic the Prick, cynosurus,
Caught every eye at the
Reptile Ball.
Another POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) from Hilary Price in today’s Rhymes With Orange:
(#1) Edgar Allan Poe + po’ boy
The Raven flies to New Orleans.
[revised version]
From David Preston, yesterday’s Brewster Rockit comic strip, in a male character attempts to mansplain mansplaining to Pamela Mae Snap (aka Irritable Belle):
(#1) (Note strategic use of speech bubbles in the third panel.)
Two recent cartoons in my feed that play with language: a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) in Rhymes With Orange, an outrageous pun in Bizarro (a replay from 2009, first posted here on 2/15/14).
Today is Canada Day, the 150th, and also the 30th anniversary of the Canadian dollar coin, the loonie (le huard):
(#1)
#4 in my “Squid Pro Quo” posting is from Marcus Connor’s Brainless Tales, a new webcomic for me, but one largely devoted to language play. And immediately I came across this cartoon, with a portmanteau noun denoting a hybrid, doubly phallic, foodstuff:
(#1)
baniener = banana + wiener, denoting a decidedly louche anthromorphized banana-wiener. Hey, baby, wanna dance?
