Archive for the ‘Phrasal overlap portmanteaus’ Category
December 28, 2021
… Wayno’s portmanteauing title for yesterday’s (12/27) Wayno/Piraro Bizarro:
(#1) A play on Shaw / slaw (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
Three things: one, plays on the Shaw of George Bernard Shaw (plenty of room for silliness here); two, on the wonders of (cole) slaw; and three, a note on the exclamation by George (which of course has nothing to do with GBS, but also nothing to with kings of Great Britain, since George I (from Hanover) didn’t ascent to the throne until 1714, while exclamations calling on a George go back at least to 1616).
(more…)
Posted in Euphemism, Language and food, Language play, Movies and tv, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Puns | 1 Comment »
December 25, 2021
Wayno/Piraro Bizarro cartoons for the 21st (Winter Solstice), 23rd (Festivus, for the airing of grievances), and 25th (Christmas Day). The first two are Christmas-related, but today’s is not (at least in any way I can see), so in a spirit of holiday orneriness, I’ll start with that one.
12/25: the Fritz Carlton:
(#1) Ritz on the fritz (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)
Fritz Carlton: an erratic portmanteau of on the fritz ‘not functioning’ and Ritz-Carlton the luxury hotel chain. (Note: the desk clerk is a supercilious Frenchman, an imagined present-day César Ritz.)
(more…)
Posted in Comic conventions, Holidays, Idioms, Linguistics in the comics, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Poetry, Portmanteaus, Slang | 2 Comments »
November 10, 2021
… in recent days, covering a wide territory: in chronological order,
— from 10/31, a Mother Goose and Grimm Psychiatrist cartoon with a Halloween theme and some puns
— from the 11/1 New Yorker, a Desert Crawl cartoon by David Sipress
— from 11/3, a Zippy strip with Zippylicious repetition (onomatomania)
— from 11/9, a Rhymes With Orange with a notable POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau)
(more…)
Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Puns, Trade names | Leave a Comment »
October 6, 2021
[Proviso: this posting is about, among other things, ritual insult — a kind of verbal play-fighting — but it doesn’t pretend to be an essay on the very large number of forms and functions of ritual insults (and, more generally, play-fighting), even in the modern U.S., much less in different sociocultural contexts around the world and throughout history.]
Today, example 2 in a series of comics on masculinity for boys, a One Big Happy from the past (6/27/09):
(#1) Ruthie heaps formulaic insults on her brother Joe (including the kid insults stupid head, monkey face, and nachos for brains — poopy head, a stand-in for the stronger shit for brains, would be the classic kid insult) until she hits on something he really cares about
(more…)
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Masculinity, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus | 2 Comments »
September 1, 2021
🐇🐇🐇 It was 8/30, and the comic strip Mother Goose and Grimm went POP!, exploded in a phrasal overlap portmanteau, the one in the title:
(with the snow-sliding dog seen doing an airborne trick in the second panel of the strip).
Not your everyday POP, because it works straightforwardly in pronunciation but works only imperfectly in spelling:
snowboarder + border collie = snow border collie
Distinct spellings, boarder vs. border, homophones in both AmE and BrE (but see below).
(more…)
Posted in Dialects, Language and animals, Language and sports, Linguistics in the comics, Phonology, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Spelling, Variation | Leave a Comment »
May 10, 2021
The Wayno/Piraro Bizarro from 5/4 (which was, appropriately, Star Wars Day):
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau), but here’s behavioral science + science fiction = behavioral science fiction. There’s something to be said about each of the contributing expressions.
(more…)
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Science, Social sciences | 3 Comments »
August 12, 2020
Yet another Bizarro POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) — Dan Piraro is very fond of them — from 12/22/19:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 8 in this strip — see this Page.)
So: Christopher Robin + Robin Hood — plus, of course, the outrageous Robin Hood pun: he steals from the rich and gives to the Pooh.
(more…)
Posted in Books, Linguistics in the comics, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus | 2 Comments »
December 13, 2019
It’s Eva Marie Saint Lucy’s Day and, in today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro combo, a Kurt Russell terrier bounds in:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbol in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there’s just one in this strip — see this Page.)
First, Kurt Russell and the Russell terrier. Then Eva Marie Saint and St. Lucy’s Day. In both cases, a member of what I’ve called the Acting Corps (see the Page on this blog), with a name in a POP (a phrasal overlap portmanteau; see the Page on this blog).
(more…)
Posted in Actors, Holidays, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Shirtlessness, Understanding comics | 2 Comments »
