Language
A plethora of puns
1. The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, ‘You stay here, I’ll go on a head.’
14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, ‘No change yet.’
17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
20. A backward poet writes inverse.
21. In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
22. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
23. Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!
Thanks Max
Literary rules
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat)
Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
Be more or less specific.
Remarks in brackets (however relevant) are (usually) (but not always) unnecessary.
Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
No sentence fragments.
Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
One should NEVER generalize.
Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
Don’t use no double negatives.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
One-word sentences? Eliminate.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be ignored.
Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
Kill all exclamation points!!!
Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
Puns are for children, not groan readers.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Who needs rhetorical questions?
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
Pun intended
- The roundest knight at king Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
- I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
- She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.
- A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.
- The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
- Now matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
- A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
- A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
- Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
- Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
- A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
- Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
- Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, ‘You stay here, I’ll go on a head.’
- I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
- A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab centre said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
- A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, ‘No change yet.’
- A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
- It’s not that the man did not know how to juggle, he just didn’t have the balls to do it.
- The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
- The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
- A backward poet writes inverse.
- In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
- When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
- Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!
Thanks Gene
Happy ‘Talk Like a Pirate’ day
Today, September 19th, is “Talk Like a Pirate” day. Here’s Slappy the Pirate teaching his dog Buddy to talk like a pirate.
Slappy and Buddy? Those don’t sound like pirate names.
Decipher what yo kids are saying…
With today’s slang it’s hard to know what those kids are talking about.
The Slang Dictionary might be of assistance.
A few examples:
- crackalackin’ happening; been going on. “Hey dude, what’s crackalackin’?”
- cup cakin’ v. To flirt with or to display ‘puppy love’. “Now since Gerrid is in the 5th grade he always cup cakin’ with Trina.”
- deebo to steal. See “jack.” Derived from the character in the movie “Friday”, who steals from all of the neighborhood people. “I’m gonna deebo Mom’s credit card.”
- fo’ shiggidy my weeble Another term for saying, “for sure my friend.”
- fugly very ugly. Derived from fu@*ing ugly.
- L 7 Another way of calling someone a square or a nerd. Derived from text messaging- it looks like “a square.” “Man that dudes an L 7.”
- making cookies having sex. Usually used as a code term to warn friends not to come by and interrupt.
8 everyday words with X-rated origins
- Fundamental
- Manatee
- Mastodon
- Avocado
- Venus flytrap
- Seminar
- Orchid
- Hysteria
Now, find out the x-rated origins of these everyday words.
English… no wonder people have trouble with it…
I take it you already know,
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead – it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
Redundancy
Redundancy is the unnecessary use of either needless, tautological, pleonastic or superfluous text, by which one repeats, in duplication, the same, identical, aforesaid things over and over and over and over again, beyond what would be needed or required to explain, or make comprehensible, the intended or signified meaning of that which one wishes to convey. These things can be referred to as being Redundant. Customarily, it is usually common in redundancy to repeat, sometimes with different phrasing or words, the same idea or reasoning, thus restating one’s thoughts, sometimes paraphrasing oneself and effectively saying the same thing twice, or double, or thrice (three times; triply so), or any number of excessive, unnecessary restatements greater than zero.
Here are a few redundant phrases:
- ABS system
- AC current
- ATM Machine
- absolutewly nothing
- ask the question
- advance planning
- advance warning
- armed gunman
- added bonus
- and also
- arrived at the conclusion
- assembled together
- attach together
- 12 noon
- 12 midnight
- autobiography of my life
- big giant
- big in size
- brief in duration
- cash money
- climb up
- close proximity
- cold temperature
- collaborate together
- complete opposite
- component parts
- consensus of opinion
- continue to remain
- current status
- doctorate degree
- DOS operatinog system (Disk Operating System)
- DVD disk (Digital Versatile Disk)
- each and every
- estimated ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival)
- estimated roughly at
- end result
- exact same
- fellow colleague
- few in number
- filled to capacity
- former veteran
- foreign imports
- frozen ice
- free gift
- green in color
- head of cabbage (cabbage means head)
- HIV virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus)
- honest truth
- hot water heater
- IRA account (Individual Retirement Account)
- join together
- knowledgeable experts
- LCD display (Liquid Crystal Display)
- lower down
- merged together
- more and more
- mutual agreement
- my personal opinion
- new breakthrough
- new developement
- original source
- over and over
- overexaggerate
- pair of twins
- passing fad
- past experience
- past history
- personally, I think
- PIN number (Personal Identification Number)
- postpone until later
- potentially hazardous
- pre-recorded
- protest against
- raise up
- RAM memory (Random Access Memory)
- regular routine
- repeat again
- roast beef with au jus (au jus meand with juice)
- Rio Grande River (Rio Grande means river)
- Sahara Desert (Sahara is derived from the arabic word for desert)
- same identical
- square in shape
- starve to death
- still remains
- surrounded on all sides
- sum total
- tall of stature
- temporary loan
- tied up
- totally destroyed
- tuna fish
- unexpected surprise
- unite together
- unmarried bachelor
- UPC code (Universal Product Code)
- usual habit
- very unique
- VIN number (Vehicle Identification Number)
- visible to the eye
- weather outside
- while at the same time
- never at any time
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.” — Oscar Wilde
10 mispronunciations that make you sound stupid
From the Tech Republic:
From #1: Realtor
Many people — I’ve even heard it from people on national TV — pronounce this word REAL-uh-ter. Is this a case of wide-spread dyslexia, transposing the a and the l? It’s REAL-tor. That’s it. You’d think only two syllables would be easier to pronounce, but apparently not.
#2: Nuclear
Do you know how tough it is to be an advocate for the correct pronunciation of this word (NU-clee-er) when the president of the United States pronounces it NU-cu-lar? I don’t buy that it’s a regional thing. Ya’ll is a regional thing; nu-cu-lar is not.
#3: Jewelry
It’s not JOO-la-ree, it’s JOOL-ree. Again with the making things harder by turning a word into three syllables. What’s with that?
#4: Supposedly/supposably
The latter is a nonexistent word.
#5: Supposed to/suppose to
I think this one is more a matter of a lazy tongue than of ignorance. It takes an extra beat in there to emphasize the d at the end, but it’s worth it. And never omit the d if you’re using the term in a written communication or people will think you were raised in a hollowed-out tree trunk somewhere.
#6: Used to/use to
Same as above.
#7: Anyway/anyways
There’s no s at the end. I swear. Look it up.
#8: February/Febuary
As much as it galls me, there is an r between the b and the u. When you pronounce the word correctly it should sound like you’re trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles — FEB broo ary.
#9: Recur/reoccur
Though the latter is tempting, it’s not a word. And again, why add another syllable if you don’t need it?
#10: Mischievous/mischievious
I know, I know, it sounds so Basil Rathbone to say MIS cha vous, but that’s the right way. Mis CHEE vee us is more commonly used, but it’s wrong.
And last but not least, my personal all-time pet peeve — the word often. It should be pronounced OFF un, not OFF tun. The t is silent.