traveshamockery

[Ben Zimmer]

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 8:31 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> That's what Chris Cuomo of CNN suggests as a good description is the
> wrist-slap sentencing of a seven-time-repeat-DUI rich guy.
>
> 42,500 raw Googlits - and that's just for the correct spelling.
>
> Is the presumed coiner known?
>
> (Tough noogies if this has been addressed before. I'm too busy to look it
> up.)

I discussed "traveshamockery" in a 2009 Language Log post (which I
linked to in an ADS-L post... really not that hard to search for!). It
goes back to a 2004 ad for Miller Lite with Bob Odenkirk.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1112

As I say there, it surely owes a debt of gratitude to Woody Allen's
line in "Bananas": "I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty.
It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of
two mockeries of a sham."

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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