Playing with words
19/11/24 01:37
Which of the following do you think is funniest?
Example One:
Knock, knock
Who’s there
Chooch
Chooch who?
Gesundheit!
Example Two:
Knock, knock
Who’s there
Chooch
Chooch who?
Did you just hear a train?
I am posing the question in my journal because if I pose it to my family the most likely response is rolling eyes. I might just get ignored. I might get someone to say, “Grandpa joke!” But I’m unlikely to get a laugh. If I were to get a laugh, the most likely candidate would be our son, who has become used to being accused of telling Dad jokes himself. One day our grandson said to me, “I don’t want to grow up because if I do I will have to start telling Dad jokes.” Most of my family thought that line was funnier than the jokes I tell.
What do you call a fake noodle?
An impasta.
Why did the cookie cry?
Its father was a wafer a long time.
Where do you go to buy soup?
The stock market.
I’ve been telling puns since I was the age our oldest grandson now is. My mother used to groan. My wife ignores me. Most of my family avoids laughing unless I come up with a really good one. I’ve got several that require elaborate stories to set up the pun, but my family has heard them so many times that they try to interrupt before I can tell the whole story.
Whether or not they laugh, there is joy in simply playing with language. The term “wordplay” is a good description of a particular way of considering words and their meaning that is pleasant. Dopamine is a hormone that serves as a neurotransmitter in the human brain. It plays an important role in many human functions, including movement, memory, and motivation. It has been dubbed the “feel good” hormone because it gives a sense of pleasure. Brain researchers have been able to track the release of dopamine when people tell and hear jokes. It is more than playing with words gives us pleasure, which it does. Playing with words is essential to the process of controlling memory, mood, sleep, learning, concentration, movement and other body functions. Jokes can help ease pain and speed recovery from illness.
Words are powerful. They can be used to harm and they can be used to heal.
One of the great teachers in my life worked hard to get students to take words seriously. I once turned in to him a paper of which I was especially proud. He responded by asking me to re-write it so that it would communicate the same ideas with half of the words. I was annoyed at the time, but it proved to be a very important part of my education. I used the technique of cutting words out of a manuscript as I was learning to preach. There is an economy of language that is necessary for effective oral communication.
One thing that I’ve been doing now that I am retired is to participate in a poetry group. We meet a couple of times each month and share poems that have been written to a shared prompt. When I’ve had a couple of weeks to think about the prompt, I can sometimes come up with a meaningful poem. Almost always the process involves writing a first draft and going through the poem again and again eliminating unnecessary words. I also tend to shorten prose when I edit my writing, but the effect is most dramatic in the case of poetry. I’m a wordy person and it is unlikely that I will become much of a poet because of my tendency to turn any topic into an essay, but the discipline is a good mental exercise for me.
Each year for the past 20 years, Oxford University Press has gone through the discipline of whittling down the verbiage of an entire year into a single word. The Oxford Word of the Year is announced in early December. This year they have released the six finalists early. Sometimes the word of the year is more than one. One third of this year’s finalists consist of two words. Here is the list:
Lore
Brain rot
Dynamic pricing
Demure
Slop
Romantasy
I don’t get a vote in the selection. If I did, I wouldn’t vote for Romantasy. I’m slow to adopt new words. There are plenty of words in the English language without smashing multiple words together or making up new words for situations that don’t require fresh language. People have been fantasizing about romance for thousands of years without needing a smashup.
On the other hand, I probably would also pass on demure and lore. They are both words from the past that have somehow returned to more popular use.
I could easily eliminate slop because I’m not a big fan of onomatopoeia. Well, I like the word onomatopoeia, which itself is a smashup of two Greek words, “onoma” and “poiein.”
That leaves the two entries that are two words instead of one. I would be no good at selecting the word of the year. Actually, I was not impressed with the 2023 word of the year, rizz. The spell checker in my computer still hasn’t learned that word. I probably also wouldn’t have voted for chav, which won one year. I thought the 2013 winner, selfie, was a pretty good choice, but I think that the folks at Oxford totally bombed with the 2015 choice of the crying with laughter emoji. After all an emoji isn’t a word. I think they cheated that year.
Perhaps the best multiple word choice was 2016 when post-truth was chosen with the dash included. It’s pretty obvious the Oxford folks were influenced by the US election in which case the nomination of brain rot, slop, and romantasy all make a bit of sense for this year’s nomination.
Whatever the choice, I did get an essay out of the short list. None of the nominations seem likely to inspire poetry, however. I’ll demur to writing a poem. Look it up. The verb demur is different than the adjective demure.
Example One:
Knock, knock
Who’s there
Chooch
Chooch who?
Gesundheit!
Example Two:
Knock, knock
Who’s there
Chooch
Chooch who?
Did you just hear a train?
I am posing the question in my journal because if I pose it to my family the most likely response is rolling eyes. I might just get ignored. I might get someone to say, “Grandpa joke!” But I’m unlikely to get a laugh. If I were to get a laugh, the most likely candidate would be our son, who has become used to being accused of telling Dad jokes himself. One day our grandson said to me, “I don’t want to grow up because if I do I will have to start telling Dad jokes.” Most of my family thought that line was funnier than the jokes I tell.
What do you call a fake noodle?
An impasta.
Why did the cookie cry?
Its father was a wafer a long time.
Where do you go to buy soup?
The stock market.
I’ve been telling puns since I was the age our oldest grandson now is. My mother used to groan. My wife ignores me. Most of my family avoids laughing unless I come up with a really good one. I’ve got several that require elaborate stories to set up the pun, but my family has heard them so many times that they try to interrupt before I can tell the whole story.
Whether or not they laugh, there is joy in simply playing with language. The term “wordplay” is a good description of a particular way of considering words and their meaning that is pleasant. Dopamine is a hormone that serves as a neurotransmitter in the human brain. It plays an important role in many human functions, including movement, memory, and motivation. It has been dubbed the “feel good” hormone because it gives a sense of pleasure. Brain researchers have been able to track the release of dopamine when people tell and hear jokes. It is more than playing with words gives us pleasure, which it does. Playing with words is essential to the process of controlling memory, mood, sleep, learning, concentration, movement and other body functions. Jokes can help ease pain and speed recovery from illness.
Words are powerful. They can be used to harm and they can be used to heal.
One of the great teachers in my life worked hard to get students to take words seriously. I once turned in to him a paper of which I was especially proud. He responded by asking me to re-write it so that it would communicate the same ideas with half of the words. I was annoyed at the time, but it proved to be a very important part of my education. I used the technique of cutting words out of a manuscript as I was learning to preach. There is an economy of language that is necessary for effective oral communication.
One thing that I’ve been doing now that I am retired is to participate in a poetry group. We meet a couple of times each month and share poems that have been written to a shared prompt. When I’ve had a couple of weeks to think about the prompt, I can sometimes come up with a meaningful poem. Almost always the process involves writing a first draft and going through the poem again and again eliminating unnecessary words. I also tend to shorten prose when I edit my writing, but the effect is most dramatic in the case of poetry. I’m a wordy person and it is unlikely that I will become much of a poet because of my tendency to turn any topic into an essay, but the discipline is a good mental exercise for me.
Each year for the past 20 years, Oxford University Press has gone through the discipline of whittling down the verbiage of an entire year into a single word. The Oxford Word of the Year is announced in early December. This year they have released the six finalists early. Sometimes the word of the year is more than one. One third of this year’s finalists consist of two words. Here is the list:
Lore
Brain rot
Dynamic pricing
Demure
Slop
Romantasy
I don’t get a vote in the selection. If I did, I wouldn’t vote for Romantasy. I’m slow to adopt new words. There are plenty of words in the English language without smashing multiple words together or making up new words for situations that don’t require fresh language. People have been fantasizing about romance for thousands of years without needing a smashup.
On the other hand, I probably would also pass on demure and lore. They are both words from the past that have somehow returned to more popular use.
I could easily eliminate slop because I’m not a big fan of onomatopoeia. Well, I like the word onomatopoeia, which itself is a smashup of two Greek words, “onoma” and “poiein.”
That leaves the two entries that are two words instead of one. I would be no good at selecting the word of the year. Actually, I was not impressed with the 2023 word of the year, rizz. The spell checker in my computer still hasn’t learned that word. I probably also wouldn’t have voted for chav, which won one year. I thought the 2013 winner, selfie, was a pretty good choice, but I think that the folks at Oxford totally bombed with the 2015 choice of the crying with laughter emoji. After all an emoji isn’t a word. I think they cheated that year.
Perhaps the best multiple word choice was 2016 when post-truth was chosen with the dash included. It’s pretty obvious the Oxford folks were influenced by the US election in which case the nomination of brain rot, slop, and romantasy all make a bit of sense for this year’s nomination.
Whatever the choice, I did get an essay out of the short list. None of the nominations seem likely to inspire poetry, however. I’ll demur to writing a poem. Look it up. The verb demur is different than the adjective demure.
