Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends!
Don’t sweat the petty stuff, pet the sweaty stuff!
I first read that on a Crumb Zap cover eons ago.
Writer: “She stumbled and lay prostitute on the floor.”
Editor: “You must learn to distinguish between a fallen woman, and one who has merely slipped.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been loving somebody.
I only know it isn’t mine.”
“Alison” Elvis Costello
You can always tell a Yale man, but you can’t tell him much.
In the humorous indie game Streets of Rogue, a mobster has the line “Blood makes you related. Loyalty makes you family. Meatballs make you fart.”
And thou, Great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.
I’ve loved that song for decades, but I never really understood that line until now — thanks!
But is that zeugma, or merely double entendre? My understanding of zeugma is that it has to be a word whose double senses are used differently in two different phrases, not merely two different takes of a single word like “somebody” / “some body”.
I consider “some body/ somebody” a pun, not a zeugma.
What if she’s pregnant?
Ah, true. My post — “she was turned on by the television, and vice-versa” — isn’t technically a zeugma, then, though it implies one, and is easily adapted into one:
“She was turned on by the television, and the television was turned on by her.”
That reminds me of the P. G. Wodehouse tag about a character having “something on his mind besides his hair”.
“His face was drawn, but the curtains were real.”
I feel it qualifies. When you say you’re loving somebody, it implies an emotional relationship with a specific individual. Saying you’re loving some body implies a casual sexual encounter.
Also from Hamilton, sung by King George III:
“And no, don’t change the subject,
'Cause you’re my favorite subjects.”
I’m not entirely sure it counts as zeugma, but I like the word play nonetheless.
From The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce:
Piano, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.