"like pickles and ice cream"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Victor is right but there's more to it. I call it a meme rather than a
phrase or an idiom because it can vary between (early) "pickles and ice
cream" and "ice cream and pickles" (with the latter now
vastly predominating). I wouldn't call the linkage a "cliche" in the strict
sense either, because all the words actually mean is pickles and ice cream.
Convention, stereotyping, repetition, etc., however, have invested the words
with a halo of suggetsion that no one could guess without having been told
(or having deduced from multiple exposures).

I also find memey-ness in the fact that though pickles and ice cream are
culturally linked in a way that, say, "pickles and apple pie" are not the
dominant connotations of the linkage vary: crazy kids at first, pregnant
women later. Realistically, "pickles and apple pie" would seem to
be comparably gratifying to the eaters in question, but that combination is
never used, except perhaps by the inevitable,
idiosyncratic maverick somewhere in the English-speaking world.

"Meme" seems to me to be an unusually appropriate designation this case. But
perhaps there's a good reason, known to more proficient memesters, for
denying memey-ness to "pickles and ice cream." Perhaps (ugh) a new term is
needed.

Suggestions?

JL


On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 10:29 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "like pickles and ice cream"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It's a bit more than a common phrase.
>
> The line of Progressive Insurance commercials has a number of witticisms
> and
> other commentary that twists "common phrases", such as "I'll be here all
> week" and "Oh, look: an office party!" and "It would break his funky little
> heart." The latest adds "like pickles and ice cream" to the repertoire (Flo
> repeats it several times). It seems all of these are somewhere between a
> cliche and a meme. If you don't like it, it's a cliche. If you don't care,
> it's a meme.
>
> VS-)
>
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 10:19 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Why do you call it a meme? Idiom, certainly; common phrase, yes; but
> isn't
> > this quite a stretch for "meme"?
> >
> > m a m
>
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