There's a hip/ironic rhetorical technique that involves mocking a statement by repeating bits of it as phrasal fragments. I was surprised to see this technique employed extensively in the "Plaintiffs' response in opposition to defendant Donald J. Trump's motion for summary judgment, or in the alternative partial summary judgment": Donald Trump is too busy to be honest. So says Trump […]
"'Britannia waives the rules': The EU Brexit in quotes", BBC News 6/28/2016: Martina Anderson, MEP for Irish republican party Sinn Fein Northern Ireland voted to remain part of the EU. The vote could mean major changes to security on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. "If English votes drag us out of the EU […]
Says Bagehot, the pseudonym-cloaked correspondent of The Economist who writes a page of comment on British affairs every week (25 June 2016, p. 27 in Brexit-delayed UK edition; not present in the US edition dated June 25): As early as January a top Brexiteer freely admitted to Bagehot that his campaign planned to turn the public […]
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Richard Warmington has pointed out that "affinity" is a contronym (a word with two opposite or contradictory meanings). Another example of a contronym is "sanction", which can signify both "penalty for disobeying a law" and "permission or approval for an action".
An impressively ambiguous headline: Benjamin Kabak, "Second Ave. change orders pressure December completion", 6/27/2016. [h/t Anschel Schaffer-Cohen] Update — as Anschel Schaffer-Cohen observed in sending this in, the ambiguity is likely to send many readers down a garden path and catch them up short at some point around "December". Those who are all too familiar […]
Dahlia Lithwick, "The Ideal Allies", Slate 6/27/2016: Make no mistake, Whole Woman’s Health is a massive win for choice, even though nobody believed that the very core of Planned Parenthood v. Casey wasn't in peril this term.* *Update, June 27, 2016: This story also originally said nobody believed that the very core of Planned Parenthood […]
Peter Holley, "Foul-mouthed parrot may be used as evidence in murder trial, prosecutor says", WaPo 6/26/2016: Family members believe Bud, an African gray parrot, may have witnessed the shooting that left Martin Duram dead and his wife severely injured. They believe this because the bird’s latest phrase — the one he won’t stop shouting […]
Earlier this year, I observed that there seem to be some interesting differences among individuals and styles of speech in the distribution of speech segment and silence segment durations — see e.g. "Sound and silence" (2/12/2013), "Political sound and silence" (2/8/2016) and "Poetic sound and silence" (2/12/2016). So Neville Ryant and I decided to try […]
Driving back from the airport last night in unusually heavy traffic I came to a sign that said "FORM TWO LANES".
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Or, we could ask, is Brexit like Passchendaele or like The Somme? I mean, of course, whether the noun Brexit should normally be used with a definite article ("Are you for or against the Brexit?") or without ("Are you for or against Brexit?"). We need to ignore all the constructions in which Brexit is a modifier of another […]
Khorri Atkinson, "Trump on Texit: Texas ‘will never’ secede", Texas Tribune 6/25/2016: Asked what he would do as president if Texas seceded from the United States, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on Saturday said he did not think that would happen. “Texas will never do that because Texas loves me,” Trump told reporters in […]
Roni Stern, "If you Brexit — You Bought it", Finance Magnates 4/20/2016. Also, Annie Laurie, "Brexit? I hardly even touched it!", Balloon Juice 6/25/2016. And many tweets, e.g. Remember @BorisJohnson: you #Brexit, you bought it pic.twitter.com/xjo5S9nBv1 — Dexit Cashin (@Tweet_Dec) June 25, 2016
Carmen Fought observes that "Fellow citizens, we have to up our insult game. The Scots are making us look like wankers. #mangledapricothellbeast". Certainly the Scots have taught us a wide variety of new words and insult phrases in response to Donald Trump's tweet about Brexit.