Overheard --- ("It's not rocket surgery")

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Belated indeed! In the six years since Jonathan's post, "rocket
surgery" has come up in several discussions of idiom blending, e.g.:

http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2004/12/19/idiom-blending/
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001745.html
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1572/
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=727


On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 2:03 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at mst.edu> wrote:
>
> Here's another slightly belated reply: Jonathan Lighter's quoted
> sentence below is clearly a blend:
> "It's not rocket science" + "It's not brain surgery."
> ________________________________
>
> Original message from Jonathan Lighter, Wed 8/18/2004 1:45 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Overheard
>
> "It's not rocket surgery !" is the punchline in a TV commercial that I
> first noticed a month or two ago.

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