Snowclone of the day

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Chris Massey wrote to point out that shovel-ready has already been cloned: Gardiner Harris and Kenneth Chang, "Beaker-Ready Projects? Colleges Have Quite a Few", NYT, 1/23/2009.



3 Comments

  1. Stephen Jones said,

    February 24, 2009 @ 11:33 am

    What tool is needed to manufacture strawmen. Some of the stimulus package must come to academia surely?

  2. dr pepper said,

    February 24, 2009 @ 2:55 pm

    A good snowclone should be speech center ready.

  3. Arnold Zwicky said,

    February 25, 2009 @ 6:23 pm

    To harp on an old theme, which I've written about many times: variations on a formulaic expression don't make for a snowclone; if they did, then there would be as many snowclones as there are formulaic expressions. Playful allusions are everywhere.

    The line between playful allusions and snowclones isn't always entirely clear, but there certainly are many clear examples of each. Some discussion here and here.

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