"You scalar implicature!"
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Today's SMBC:
Mouseover title: "Oddly enough, the hard part was picking jargon NOT to use."
The AfterComic:
I'm always happy to see Linguistics singled out for praise, but in fairness, technical terminology works pretty well from whatever domain:
Exocrine secretion!
Weak anisotropic reflection!
Torridonian alluvium!
Conjugacy-closed subgroup!
Homotopical nilpotency!
Simplicial foliation!
Hypersoft bijection!
Facticious akataphasia!
And cross-domain combinations can be even better, like "bijective alluvium".
Rodger C said,
November 29, 2024 @ 10:55 am
"You surd! You absolute auslaut!"
TR said,
November 29, 2024 @ 1:09 pm
Also, your ass is a pronoun.
DaveK said,
November 29, 2024 @ 9:08 pm
Shakespeare got there first. From King Lear:
Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!
stephen said,
December 1, 2024 @ 4:51 pm
And then there's this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Smathers#1950_Senate_Democratic_primary
Part of American political lore is the Smathers "redneck speech", which Smathers reportedly delivered to a poorly educated audience. The comments were recorded in a small magazine, picked up in Time and elsewhere, and etched into the public's memories.[39] Time, during the campaign, reported a "yarn" that Smathers had said: "Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy."[40][41] The leading reporter who actually covered Smathers said he always gave the same humdrum speech. No Florida newspapers covering the campaign ever reported such remarks contemporaneously. Smathers offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove he said it, and there were no takers before his death.[42][43]
stephen said,
December 1, 2024 @ 5:26 pm
Your mention of scalars reminded me of something in this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Hodgepodge-Iii-Bryan/dp/0689117981
Hodgepodge: A Commonplace Book. 1986
by J. Bryan III
He lists 21 scalars and ranks them by assigning each a percentage, using a fictitious person's wealth as examples:
All of Mr. Banks' wealth is in gold.
Most of Mr. Banks' wealth is in gold
Some of…
A portion of…
A little of…
And so on.
(I don't have the book with me right now, I don't remember the whole list.)
Roscoe said,
December 1, 2024 @ 6:20 pm
From the Wikipedia page for Captain Haddock (of "Tintin" fame"):
At the time Captain Haddock was first introduced, just before the Second World War, his manners presented a moral problem to Hergé. As a sailor, Haddock ought to have a very colourful language. However, Hergé had to balance that against the character's appearing in a Catholic children's magazine, which would dictate he would be unable to use any swearwords. The solution reportedly came when Hergé took advantage of a situation he had become embroiled in during 1933, shortly after the "Four Powers Act" had come into being. Hergé tried to intervene in a discussion between a shopkeeper and customer, but before he could the shopkeeper became so enraged that he lost his composure for a moment and accused his customer of being "a peace treaty". This was the solution Hergé sought: what if the captain would use strange or difficult words that were not offensive in themselves, but would hurl them out as if they were very strong cusswords…?
The idea took form quickly and in his first anger-scene the captain storms towards a party of Bedouin raiders yelling expressions like 'Hydromeduse' (a form of jellyfish), 'troglodyte' (cave dweller) and 'ectoplasm'. (The bedouins immediately take flight, but from French Meharistes (North African desert police) appearing behind the captain's back.) The trick with the false swearwords proved successful and was a mainstay in future books. Consequently Hergé actively started collecting difficult or dirty-sounding words for use in the captain's next anger attacks and on occasion even searched dictionaries to come up with inspiration.
Bob Ladd said,
December 2, 2024 @ 5:28 pm
Thank you, Roscoe. Captain Haddock was the first thing I thought of when I read the original post.
Yerushalmi said,
December 4, 2024 @ 10:30 am
You biscuit conditional!
TIC Redux said,
December 8, 2024 @ 12:32 pm
The first thought that came to my mind was Dashiell Hammett's inspired use of "gunsel" in The Maltese Falcon…
JChance4d4 said,
December 10, 2024 @ 2:06 am
I also thought of Captain Haddock, and of Egon expressing hostility to the slime in Ghostbusters II–"You have weak electrochemical bonds!"