Paraprosdokian comes from Greek "παρά-", meaning "despite" and προσδοκία", meaning "expectation" but it is not a term of classical (or medieval) Greek or Latin rhetoric, but a late 20th century neologism.
A neologism is a newly coined word not yet accepted into mainstream language.
It's just a weird word to describe some linguistic fun and I thought I share some of it today. Probably the best known modern usage of this is by Groucho Marx and to some extent Red Skelton.
- If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
- War does not determine who is right-only who is left.
- Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad.
- Evening news is where they begin with 'Good Evening', and then proceed to tellyou why it isn't.
- To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
- I didn't say it was you fault, I said I was blaming you.
- Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.
No comments:
Post a Comment