Mersey beat. River Mersey in Liverpool. Not mercy.
Okay so which is it?
Beetles, or
Beat - 'ls?
Correct, not “idiosyncratic”. Also you spelled Aluminium wrong.
Yes.
My son just informed me that Think Geek’s tagline, “for the smart masses” is supposed to be funny, like, “for the smart-asses.” :dubious: I just thought it was homage to us, the smart ones — as opposed to the unwashed masses, who don’t understand such interesting and allusive gadgets.
Although, of course, I am a smart-ass of long standing, so I suppose that works too.
When I was in college, my English literature prof insisted on pronouncing the name of the protagonist in Byron’s poem as Don Joo-ahn rahter than Dohn Hwahn. He insisted that because Byron was English, and it was a fictional character, that the anglicized version was “correct.”
We then asked if Byron had consulted with Tirso deMolina, who had written the first account of the Don Juan legend nearly two centuries before Byron, but it was not a productive conversation.
IIRC, it doesn’t scan right if you pronounce it “Don Hwahn.” We learned the same in high school, and it was pretty clear that “Don Joo-ahn” was the correct way to pronounce it for the poem.
ETA: And here’s the verse that clearly demonstrates it:
ETA2: Oh, and a thread discussing the topic.
I always used to think that the Beat Generation was called that because of the beat of the music they listened to. I was kind of taken aback when I learned it [originally](beat generation wiki origin of name) meant “beaten down”.
Anyway, stuff like the OP describes is always happening to me. Like realizing that an elbow is called that because when you bend your arm it looks like the letter…
Byron wasn’t the first or last poet who torutred a rhyme!
Don’t feel bad. It’s only been a few days since I realized that Kay Jewelers’ slogan, “Every Kiss Begins with Kay,” is also a play on words. :o
I didn’t realise for years either, as it never really registered that beetle was spelt incorrectly.
Damn it. I hate that tagline, it’s always stuck in my head. Now it’ll be worse.
A pun! You just destroyed music for me! :smack:
I guess not. They’re still just as amazing.
I don’t think I ever gave it any thought before either.
But then again, the band is older then me.
I’ve got to wonder if I was 30 when I first heard of them if I would have been like :rolleyes:
Oh, I see. And I was thinking it was about prostituting yourself for bling.
It took me until me until a year or two ago that I realized that the In-sink-erator brand of garbage disposals is a play on the word incinerator. I always just thought it was an erator inside your sink, whatever an erator was (I guess I started to think of what an erator must be, something to get rid of stuff I guess, kind of like an incinerator, and then… OHHHHHH).
I liked Jay Leno’s take on this: “I think the guys in those commercials are hoping for something that begins with F.”
Kay Jewelers (formerly Chuck’s) .
Would that be ‘jag-you-are’ or ‘jag-wire’?
It took me a long time to notice the double meaning of Bender’s name in Futurama.
It was pretty late in my life when I learned the difference between monkeys and Monkees. One is a group of hairy animals that make amusing noises. The other live in trees.
Not quite what the OP is looking for, but in the U.S., there was a popular 80’s ska / new wave band called The English Beat. In the UK, they go by The Beat; they added “English” because apparently there was another band in the U.S. that went by The Beat.
Once I knew that they were really The Beat, I couldn’t help but focus on how close their name was to The Beatles - like, wow, pretty risky for them to take on a name that might be confused with the Fabs. But, The (English) Beat are a truly great band that sound nothing like The Beatles, so I think it is just my issue 