Blending, malaphor, or what?

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 10, 2004, at 10:39 AM, John Fitzpatrick wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       John Fitzpatrick <grendel.jjf at VERIZON.NET>
> Subject:      Blending, malaphor, or what?
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> From an AP story about Alan Keyes' entrance into the Illinios Senate
> race against Barrack Obama:
>
> <<Obama said Monday that there would be "a sufficient number of
> debates" between himself and Keyes-- both men are Harvard-educated,
> polished debaters... He declined to set a specific number, adding that
> staffers in the two campaigns would IRON ON the details
> later.>>[emphasis added]
> It is amusing to speculate about what the reporter has been doing that
> would make "iron on" pop out instead of the metaphorical "iron out",
> but I have to admit that the more I looked at it, the more it started
> to make sense.

Reminds me of the punchline from an old - '60's or '70's - "Peanuts"
Sunday strip. Lucy asks Charlie Brown something like, "Charlie Brown,
why are you Charlie Brown?" And Charlie commences to speechify through
several panels. Finally, in the last panel, we see that Lucy has
punched Charlie out and, having turned so as to address the reader, she
comments: "I had to hit him quick. He was starting to make sense."

-Wilson Gray

  So I stopped looking at it.
>
> Sean Fitzpatrick
> Irony-Free Zone:  Abandon tropes, all ye who enter here.
>