terminology - Is there a name for when the same word is used at the beginning and end of different phrases/sentences?



Is there a name for when one phrase ends with a word that starts the next phrase. For instance:



life is a peach and cream



Or



sunscreen in the eye for detail



Or (from Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)



JFKFC




Answer



You are describing word association football, a variation on the classic rhetorical device anadiplosis, “the repetition of the last word (or phrase) from the previous line, clause, or sentence at the beginning of the next”.1 In this variation, anadiplosis is combined with ellipsis, “omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context”.2


Word association football is essentially surprising in a humorous and literary sort of way, like a pun. Your examples are typical.


While not necessarily the originators of this rhetorical device, Monty Python get widespread credit for naming it.4 The name stems from one of their monologues.


Here is an example of anadiplosis, followed by the canonical example of word association football. Bolding, italics, and line breaks are added to emphasize the rhetorical structure.



Glad You Came (example of anadiplosis)


Turn the lights out now
Now, I'll take you by the hand
Hand you another drink
Drink it if you can
Can you spend a little time
Time is slipping away
Away from us, so stay
Stay with me I can make
Make you glad you came
—The Wanted3


Word Association Football


Tonight’s the night
I shall be talking about of flu
the subject of word association football.
This is a technique out a living
much used in the practice makes perfect
of psychoanalysister and brother
and one that has occupied piper
the majority rule
of my attention squad by the right number one two three
four the last five years to the memory.
It is quite remarkable baker charlie
how much the miller’s son
this so-called while you were out
word association immigrants’ problems
influences the manner from heaven
in which we sleekit cowering timrous beasties all-American
speak, the famous explorer.
And the really well that is
surprising partner in crime
is that a lot and his wife
of the lions’ feeding
time we may be c d e
effectively quite unaware of the fact or fiction section of the Watford Public Library
that we are even doing it is a far, far better thing that I do now then, now then, what's going Onward Christian Barnard the famous hearty part of the lettuce now praise famous mental homes for loonies like me.
So on the button,
my contention causing all the headaches,
is that unless we take into account of Monte Cristo
in our thinking George the Fifth
this phenomenon the other hand
we shall not be able satisfactor fiction section of the Watford Public Library again
ily to understand to attention when I’m talking to you and stop laughing
about human nature, man’s psychological make-up some story the wife’ll believe
and hence the very meaning of life itselfish bastard, I’ll kick him in the balls Pond Road.
—Monty Python



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

Years and years ago, I remember reading in a book on AmE usage that the phrasal turn a baby creeps before it walks was to some extent more common to AmE than to BrE, which preferred exclusively the "crawl" version. And so, I just recently checked on the accuracy of that information on NGram Viewer , and it actually was fact... more than a century ago! What I would like you to tell is if it would sound sort of weird to hear someone say today in the US that a child "creeps" before walking and running (see Synonyms ) rather than it crawls. Also, what's the story to those terms? How did "to crawl" come to prevail and supersede "to creep" to describe the way a baby moves around? As with a plant, so with a child. His mind grows by natural stages. A child creeps before he walks , sits before he stands, cries before he laughs, babbles before he talks, draws a circle before he draws a square, lies before he tells the truth, and is selfish before he
Read more

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

Does this sentence have too many subjunctives? If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries. I am stumped by this sentence construction. First, there is "Let it be," which is a common English idiomatic phrase, but then it follows another subjunctive. Is that to say you can actually have a subjunctive followed by another subjunctive? Also, why does the sentence use "please"? If that's the subjunctive tense there, then why is it followed by another subjunctive instead of a conditional, or maybe "Let it be" is the conditional? Lastly, I wish to know how the that is used in the sentence. Perhaps, the simplified sentence can be restated like so: Let it be decreed that they be destroyed and that they may put it into the king's treasuries. If not, maybe the simplified sent
Read more

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

I've been reading William Manchester's book "American Caesar", which is about Douglas MacArthur, and I found that he uses a strange convention for pluralizing the family name. When talking about the MacArthurs as a whole, he writes MacArthur' with an apostrophe, as in "After the war, the MacArthur' lived in Tokyo while the general was proconsul" (yes, he uses that term to describe him). I have never seen or heard of a rule that would prescribe this. Manchester is a bit old-timey in his style: for example, he also writes "in behalf of" instead of "on behalf of", which is the only one I have ever seen. So perhaps this is similar. Where does he get this apostrophe from? Edit: There seems to be some difficulty finding examples, which is odd. Here is a direct link to a page from Google Books that shows the apostrophe.
Read more

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

This is a phrase I’m particularly confused about, because it’s used often when something is manipulated or changed. For example, sometimes images surface online that are clearly Photoshopped, but people refer to them as “doctored” images. Why use the word “doctored” here? Answer The earliest Google Books match for an instance of doctored in a transitional (or perhaps post-transitional) sense between "amended" and "adulterated" appears in William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire; Including Its Dairy: Together with the Dairy Management of North Wiltshire, and the Management of Orchards and Fruit Liquor, in Herefordshire , volume 2 (1789): Men in general, however, whose palates are set to rough cider, consider the common sweet sort as an effeminate beverage; and rough cider, properly manufactured, is probably the most generous liquor; being deemed more wholesome, to habits in general, than sweet cider:—even when genuine. That which is drank, in the kingd
Read more

phrases - Somebody is gonna kiss the donkey

I heard this phrase when I was watching Battleship. An old man said, "Somebody is gonna kiss the donkey." I do not know what it means, I only heard it in a movie. What is this phrase mean? In Addition: I think it was Rihanna who said "Saddle Ridge will be in weapons range in five minutes," then the old man stated the phrase. Answer It is a confused attempt at a play on (for example) "kiss my ass," or, some similar phrase. It is quite common in English today that idioms get mangled.
Read more

typography - When a dagger is used to indicate a note, must it come after an asterisk?

The typographical symbol dagger (†) has several meanings. Possibly its most common use is as a footnote marker. According to You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies ( Partridge , 1953), when it is used for this purpose, it must be used for second footnotes only; the first footnote should be indicated by an asterisk (*), the third a double dagger (‡) and further footnotes other symbols or numbers. Where does Patridge's rule fall on a scale of one to ten, where one is "this is just one guy's random opinion" and ten is "this is a widely accepted rule of English and any deviation from it is unarguably incorrect"? This question was inspired by this Meta Stack Overflow question about the use of daggers on Stack Exchange site FAQ pages . Answer The dagger (also known as an obelisk ) is properly used for the second footnote. The asterisk is for the first, and the double dagger is for the third. This is supported by several websites: And so
Read more

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
Read more