fan-hitting (classified)

[Joel S. Berson]

There's also "When the foo (or is it Foo?) shits, wear it" -- but I
can't remember the story.

Joel

At 10/14/2008 12:49 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>the Feghoot stories date from 1956-73, so it's possible Brunvand knew
>of the term "feghoot" for the subtype of shaggy dog stories that end
>in atrocious punning, spoonerisms, etc. (check the wikpedia entries
>for "feghoot" and "shaggy dog story").  but someone should be able to
>check his 1963 paper.
>
>"feghoot" is not yet in the OED.  should it be?  ("shaggy dog story"
>made it, though.)
>
>some of my favorite feghoots: the doubly spoonerizing "boyfoot bear
>with teak(s) of Chan"; the punning "I left my harp in Sam Clam's
>Disco"; and the magnificent punning "transporting gulls across staid
>lions for immortal porposes" (this is the variant i know, and it looks
>like the most frequent one, but you can also find "sedate", "state",
>"estate", and "stately", which i judge to be inferior to "staid".
>(the first of these i've known since i was a teenager.  the other two
>i got from my daughter elizabeth when *she* was a teenager.)
>
>collections of puns often include feghoots -- puns that require a
>story to set them up.  the collection of imperfect puns that elizabeth
>zwicky and i made some years ago included a number of these (our
>favorite was "with fronds like these, who needs anemonies").
>discussion in our article on the topic:
>   http://www.stanford.edu/~zwicky/imperfect-puns.pdf
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org