# Silly Mnemonics!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [January 12, 2011, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335 "2011-01-12T13:18:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/1 "2011-01-12T13:18:59Z")
Over in this [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13345168), I mentioned that I use the mnemonic “Never Eat Soggy Waffles” to walk through the cardinal directions. As I was posting, I thought “wow…that sounds really silly…should I admit that?”
A voice in my head said “Yes”. Granted, it’s 8:15am and I haven’t had any coffeeyet.
I now ask you to join me in the freedom it’s brought me…by admitting your own silly mnemonics. Whatcha got?
-D/a
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### Author:  [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/2 "2011-01-12T13:43:43Z")
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYandZ. That’s the mnemonic I use for memorizing the alphabet.
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### Author:  [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/3 "2011-01-12T14:07:22Z")
RiBBs For Better Health. Steps to evaluate a casualty:
Responsiveness
Breathing
Bleeding
Shock
Fractures
Burns
Head
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/4 "2011-01-12T14:20:37Z")
I learned the cranial nerves with:
**O** h, **O** h, **O** h, **T** o **T** ouch **A** nd\*\* F\*\*eel **A** **G** irl’s **V** agina **S** oft **A** nd **H** airy
What can I say, I passed the class.
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### Author:  [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/5 "2011-01-12T14:24:44Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#):
>
> RiBBs For Better Health. Steps to evaluate a casualty:
>
> Responsiveness
> Breathing
> Bleeding
> Shock
> Fractures
> Burns
> Head
I don’t think that’s silly at all, considering that often during accidents it can be difficult to think calmly.
However, something like “lefty-loosey, righty-tighty” to me seems bizarre except only for the drunken.
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### Author:  [@Ann\_Onimous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Onimous)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/6 "2011-01-12T15:26:03Z")
The only ones I use all the time are for the lines and spaces of the bass clef: Good Boys Do Fine Always and All Cows Eat Grass. With two kids who play trombone, we live and breathe bass clef around our house.
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### Author:  [@Only\_Mostly\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Only_Mostly_Dead)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/7 "2011-01-12T17:27:11Z")
My favorite for lines of the treble clef: Ernie Gave Bert Dead Flies
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### Author:  [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/8 "2011-01-12T17:34:36Z")
For directions - Never Eat Shredded Wheat.
For music I learned - Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. That one always annoyed me and I complained til my teacher changed it to Every Girl and Boy Deserve Fudge. I was the hero of half my music class 🙂
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### Author:  [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/9 "2011-01-12T17:52:00Z")
> [@kayaker](#):
>
> I learned the cranial nerves with:
>
> **O** h, **O** h, **O** h, **T** o **T** ouch **A** nd\*\* F\*\*eel **A** **G** irl’s **V** agina **S** oft **A** nd **H** airy
>
> What can I say, I passed the class.
With me, it was “On Old Olympus’s Towering Top A Finn And German Viewed Some Hops.”
First stage of prophase: Leaping Zebras Pounce Down Drains.
I remember “Egad My Tiger Has Cancer,” but damned if I remember what it’s for.
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### Author:  [@saje](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saje)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/10 "2011-01-12T17:54:08Z")
One of the horse-sports is Dressage. In competition you have an arena of set dimensions, with letters as markers at set points around the ring. The short arena (20m x 40m) goes as follows, clockwise:
**A** ll **K** ing **E** dward’s **H** orses **C** an **M** ake **B** igger **F** ences
Alas, the large arena (20m x 60m) has 4 more perimeter letters, and I cannot seem to come up with a decent mnemonic for it! (A, K, V, E, S, C, M, R, B, P, F)
Oh, and last week I was replacing a gate and needed to loosen the top hing. I was staring at the nut trying to remember which way to thump it (it was very rusted) and I did have to go back to “Left to Loose, Right to Tight”. I wish I could claim drunkenness, sadly it was only fuzz-brain.
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### Author:  [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/11 "2011-01-12T17:56:34Z")
Biological nomenclature:
King Phillip Came Over For Great Sex - Kingom, Phyllum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
Trigonometry:
Soh cah toa, (or my friend’s version, “Sailors often have certain anal happiness to oppress anger” - in his defence, he was 14 at the time!)
Amino Acids, acidity and charge which I made up in my first biochem class:
HIStory Likes ARGentina because it’s BASICally a POSITIVE country (Histidine, Lysine, Argenine are bases with a positive charge…mnemonics don’t need to be true to work!)
I ATE ACID and it was a NEGATIVE experience (GlutamATE and AspartATE, acids with a negative chage)
(Looking back, I think those are hilarious given my understanding of organic chemistry now!)
Laplace transforms…remembering which values are poles and which are zeros (I’m easily confused with names of things in math), zeros are on top in the numerator, poles on the bottom in the denominator…so I think of girl-on-top sex. :eek:
I’m always coming up with things like this in order to get me through a midterm or final exam…I forget most of them later on, but they last long enough to help. I remember back in grade 8, I came up with “TACOS” for a mnemonic…I just don’t remember what it was for!
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/12 "2011-01-12T19:02:51Z")
> [@mnemosyne](#):
>
> Biological nomenclature:
>
> King Phillip Came Over For Great Sex - Kingom, Phyllum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
I used, “King Peter Could Only Fuck Golden Sheep”
Come to think of it, mine were all pretty nasty.😃
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/13 "2011-01-12T19:14:42Z")
> [@mnemosyne](#):
>
> Laplace transforms…remembering which values are poles and which are zeros (I’m easily confused with names of things in math), zeros are on top in the numerator, poles on the bottom in the denominator…so I think of girl-on-top sex. :eek:
Cripes. I wish I’d thought of that one when I was studying Laplace transforms… although it might have ended up making me even more distracted.
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### Author:  [@Alma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alma)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/14 "2011-01-12T19:15:25Z")
For the circle of fifths we used: Bob Elliot Adams Died Gulping Cafeteria Food.
Backwards it was: Four Cops Got Drunk At Ed’s Bar.
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### Author:  [@dhkendall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dhkendall)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/15 "2011-01-12T19:49:29Z")
I’m surprised no one else has brought up the colour bands on a resistor: Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly (black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey, white). Might be too common, though.
Suck at electronics to this day (despite my dad being a Certified Electronics Technician, and the one who taught me the mnemonic while passing along father-son wisdom) but that sticks.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/16 "2011-01-12T20:03:56Z")
[The comments on this page](http://planet-facts.com/planet-mnemonics.php) point out several alternatives for planet mnemonics, depending on whether you include Pluto or the other dwarf planets.
I like “My Very Excellent Mother Creates Jelly Surprise Using Nice Pink Hot Munchy Eggs!” for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumae, Makemake and Eris.
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### Author:  [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/17 "2011-01-12T20:23:21Z")
I remember the first few digits of pi using “How I need a drink, alcoholic of course” (count the letters in each word). This comes from a much longer poem that I can’t remember. I refuse to use a mnemonic device that needs its own mnemonic device.
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### Author:  [@dhkendall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dhkendall)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/18 "2011-01-12T20:38:52Z")
> [@PoorYorick](#):
>
> I remember the first few digits of pi using “How I need a drink, alcoholic of course” (count the letters in each word). This comes from a much longer poem that I can’t remember. I refuse to use a mnemonic device that needs its own mnemonic device.
Oooo! [Piphilology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piphilology)! One of my favourite subjects!
My favourite mnemonic to remember the digits of pi is :
Now I will a rhyme construct
By chosen words the young instruct
Cunningly devised endeavour
Don it and remember ever
Widths in circles here you see
Sketched out in strange obscurity
(Note that endeavour needs to be spelled the “proper” way for it to work. Sorry, Americans!)
Then there are [entire books](http://www.cadaeic.net/cadintro.htm) written to conform to the digits of pi …
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### Author:  [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/19 "2011-01-12T20:40:05Z")
> [@mnemosyne](#):
>
> Biological nomenclature:
>
> King Phillip Came Over For Great Sex - Kingom, Phyllum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
Our class was taught “Kentuckians Park Cars On Freeways Going South.”
---
### Author:  [@dhkendall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dhkendall)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2011, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silly-mnemonics/567335/20 "2011-01-12T20:46:36Z")
> [@dhkendall](#):
>
> Don it and remember ever
Oops, should be “Con it …” (same number of digits, of course, but makes more sense (slightly))
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