Linguistic Humor

I am a writer and a wordsmith. I thoroughly enjoy the fun of language, with its play on words, double meanings and things like that. One of the best examples of linguistic humor is from Calvin and Hobbes. In fact, we don't even need the added fun of the characters with Calvin the six year old with the shoes that look like dinner-rolls and Hobbes, the not-very-ferocious (stuffed) tiger for this to be funny-

Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when "access" was a thing? Now, it's something you do. It got verbed. Verbing weirds language.
Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.

Same thing happened to Google. Google was a thing, now we all Google. Calvin is right. Our language is getting weird. And I am responsible for verbing lots of words, myself. Like crayon, TV, and Calvin. To wit: I will crayon that picture. I am going home to TV for the rest of the evening, and (my favorite) I will Calvin my blog entry.

Comments

Anonymous said…
oh, do I hear you. Only I'm always making up new words. I tend toward adjectives and adverbs though. sucknacious. geniosity. hmmm. wonder what that says about me?
June 18, 2008 at 10:44 AM
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