Another extraordinary coordination

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 5, 2004, at 6:58 PM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> This one is interesting because the author is both trying to be funny
> and
> clearly worried that the audience won't get it, so he puts the
> coordinated items
> in scare quotes:
>
> Husband (on vacation): Biking, hiking, swimming. Why don't we ever get
> this
> much exercise at home?
>
> Wife: How quickly we discount the calories burned running "errands" and
> "late."

aside from the odd use of scare quotes, which larry horn has commented
on, i think this is just garden-variety zeugma.  entertaining, but not
grammatical (even for me).

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)