OT: Re: "mnemonic possession"

[Amy West]

As a former bio minor, I never used the King Philip phrase, and it never
would have worked for me because it's so  nonsensiscal. It would have
been much easier for me to just memorize the sequence of letters (which
is what I did). At least the mnemonic for the visible light spectrum -
Roy G. Biv - makes some sort of sense (a fake name). (Thanks to Arnold
for clarifying what the King Philip phrase was: I was clueless!)

---Amy West

On 10/25/13 12:01 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> On Oct 24, 2013, at 11:12 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>
>> >On Oct 24, 2013, at 7:03 AM, "Joel S. Berson"<Berson at ATT.NET>  wrote:
>> >
>>> >>Woman in bed:  "I before E, except after C! Thirty days hath
>>> >>September!  King Philip came over for good S-"
>>> >>
>>> >>Bedside visitor:  "Call the grammarians! She's having a mnemonic possession!"
>> >
>> >on my blog:
>> >
>> >http://arnoldzwicky.org/2013/10/23/remembering/
>> >
> Variant of the last one (on taxonomic classifications):
>
> King Philip courted Ophelia for great sex.
>
> I like the spaghetti version, though; you can't get really good spaghetti in Spain.
>
> LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org