Zeldar
April 14, 2008, 2:49pm
1
If you need a definition and some samples go here and if you can think of any better practitioner than Groucho, please mention whoever it is or was.
But the thread is for collecting or inventing some new examples.
If your contribution is from some other source, please at least identify that source.
Be creative!
Zeldar
April 14, 2008, 3:46pm
2
Zeldar:
If you need a definition and some samples go here and if you can think of any better practitioner than Groucho, please mention whoever it is or was.
But the thread is for collecting or inventing some new examples.
If your contribution is from some other source, please at least identify that source.
Be creative!
To be fair, it’s really the subset of Zeugma called Syllepsis that I thought we could have some fun with, and to save linking time, here a few samples from the Wikipedia article:
Syllepsis can be used with idiomatic phrases to achieve a similar result:
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
You held your breath and the door for me.
I took her hand and then an aspirin in the morning,
“Oh, flowers are as common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in London.” (from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde) Cecily is making a catty remark to Miss Fairfax, a Londoner, by using “common” in two senses, namely “numerous” and “vulgar”.
“The Russian grandees came to Elizabeth’s court dropping pearls and vermin.” Macaulay tells us here in one short phrase a great deal about the Russian grandees.
“Are you getting fit or having one?” (from the television program MA S*H)
“You are free to execute your laws, and your citizens, as you see fit.” (from the television program Star Trek: The Next Generation)
“She was a thief, you got to believe: she stole my heart and my cat.” (from the film So I Married an Axe Murderer)
“Let’s get out of these wet clothes and into some dry martinis.” – Robert Benchleyhere.
“There are going to be fewer but better Russians.” – Garbo in Ninotchka , screenwriters Lengyel, Brackett, Wilder and Reisch.
“Four of fish and finger pies…” – “Penny Lane,” Lennon & McCartney
[Surely a concise example, if it qualifies, but I think it does, given the mix of food and sexual references, played for wit.]
“because sex is an aggressive, warlike, competitive, feral thing, all full of bared teeth, bared breasts, bared souls, bared blades, and bare naked.”
(from a book of poetry I wrote 4 or 5 years ago. No titles - this was on page 13.)
Is that the kind of thing you meant?
Zeldar
April 15, 2008, 2:49pm
6
brujaja:
“because sex is an aggressive, warlike, competitive, feral thing, all full of bared teeth, bared breasts, bared souls, bared blades, and bare naked.”
(from a book of poetry I wrote 4 or 5 years ago. No titles - this was on page 13.)
Is that the kind of thing you meant?
Certainly in the ballpark.
He rode in glory and a motorcar.
Is this one a zeugma?
Your phone’s off the hook, but you’re not . --X (the band)
Huh. I never knew this these things had a name.
Rolling Stones,* Honky Tonk Women*. “She blew my nose and then she blew my mind.”
