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You must have been the terror of your teachers, Scott! (Probably a lot
of us on this list were.)<br>
<br>
Some have used “zeugma” to mean the feeling of semantic unsettledness
or oddity, of comparing (yoking together) unlikes, that zeugma (in the
older sense, which you address) produces. It is sometimes used as a
crucial criterion in testing for vagueness as opposed to ambiguity.
E.g. there is no zeugma (in either sense) in a sentence like “I have a
brother in Chicago and so does Sally”, even if my brother is older than
I and Sally’s is younger than she. This indicates that “brother” is
vague as to age. But if you say “I went to the bank yesterday and so
did Sally”, when I went fishing at the river and Sally went to deposit
checks, the sentence can only be taken as a joke (or as an attempt at
deceit); trying to construe it so produces the second kind of “zeugma”
(the strong sense of oddness). This indicates that “bank” is ambiguous
rather than vague.<br>
<br>
fwiw.<br>
<br>
--David Tuggy<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Scott wrote:
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">In my 11<sup>th</sup> grade
American Lit class we studied
“Mary Lou Wingate” as a selection from <u>John Brown’s Body</u>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">
When I pointed that the lines “She knew her Bible and how to flirt”
formed a figure of speech, the teacher<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">challenged
me. When I identified the
figure as a ‘zeugma,’ she stated that she had never heard of a
zeugma.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">I
then suggested that she should send
herself to the Principal’s office (she had sent me the previous year
for
not <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">knowing
the word
‘metaphor’) I had heard her asked me what was a meadow
for and had answered “for cows <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">to
graze, I reckon.” When
she declined to send herself to the Principal’s office, I wrote a large
note referring <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">her.
The Principal called us both in
and decided that her for not knowing a zeugma was worse than my not <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">knowing
what a meadow was for. She
had to apologize to me in class for sending me to the office the
previous <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">year
and for her not knowing what a zeugma
was. The alternative was for her to read a letter to the Editor in the
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">local
tabloid. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">Zeugma
is often found in the works of
serious writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens, and Goldsmith.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">One
of Benjamin Franklin’s more
quoted statements “We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we
shall
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">all
hang separately” and
Shakespeare’s famous line “Kill all the boys and the
luggage’” are definitely not comic <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">although
Ben’s is indeed witty.
The only zeugma that I thought detracted from the context was from one
of<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">my
favorite poets, Houseman: “He went
and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">The
modern quips “she had all of the
virtues save virtue,” “she exhausted her repertoire and her
audience,” and <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">“’Up
to Parr’
isn’t” could be considered comic although the last cost Parr his
talk show. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">I
should point out that
‘zeugma’ in English is not a single figure of speech but a class of
figures.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><font color="navy"
face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">Scott
Catledge<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="black" face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: windowtext;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="black" face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: windowtext;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="black" face="Celtic" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Celtic;">Scott Catledge<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="black" face="Celtic" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Celtic;">Professor Emeritus<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="black" face="Celtic" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Celtic;">Colm Dubh H.E.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="black" face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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