“I’m a _________, you’re a __________, he’s a __________”, in which the blanks are filled by three related terms that range from laudatory (I’m a) through derogatory (he’s a). There was recently a whole thread of these, and I automatically used the trope to reply to someone’s post on another thread.
On the series “Yes, Minister”, they were jokingly referred to as “irregular verbs” (well, that and the trope was set up to use verb phrases, rather than noun phrases).
Yes, that’s the way I’ve seen it used, as in “I give confidential briefings; you leak; he is being prosecuted under Section 2A of the Offical Secrets Act”.
I don’t think it has a name, so I’ll call it hierarchical conjugation.
I agree it completely fits in with the “Yes, Minister” thing, but I have a notion at the back of my mind that it could also have originated in “Punch” or “Private” Eye. And I think they just called it irregular verbs. Any other U.K. people seem to recall that? Little column towards the back of whichever magazine it was?
Ack, pardon me, this is turning into stream of thought stuff, but I NOW know that what I have in mind there was the same irregular verb game but done in Franglais, so they might have been ripping it off from “Yes Minister”. Hmmm.
Still, I’m going for the "appeared in magazine and was simply called “irregular verbs” idea.
(And here’s a problem, a bijou little problemette. You evil people have forced me just now to go and pick up my copy of “The Complete 'Yes Minister” and I might just feel a need to read through the whole thing. AND I even braved a tiny little spider to find it!)
Je suis voyageur. Vous etes touriste. Ils Watneysredbarrellent.
I am a traveller. You are a tourist. They are merely loud ignorant louts who are beneath both of us.