Left: The Chinese character for biáng, a type of noodle from the Shaanxi province, requires 57 strokes to write.
Right: The Japanese character for “the appearance of a dragon in flight” requires 84 strokes.
The Japanese character includes three identical “cloud” characters, so it’s not as complex as it looks. Not so the biáng character — residents of Shaanxi have invented ditties to help them remember how to write it.
— William T. Dobson, Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics, 1880
semiopathy
n. the tendency to read humorously inappropriate meanings into signs
CROSS CHILDREN WALK. Don’t listen to their screams,
But watch the CAUTION MEN AT WORK. It seems
They’re making sure that all DEAF CHILDREN DRIVE
CAREFULLY. Now let us look alive,
And take TRUCKS TURNING (named for Captain Trucks,
Who turned here when he went out hunting ducks).
Here on a sign the advertising’s clear
(Though deer can’t tell the time) for WATCH FOR DEER.
At FREE MUNICIPAL PARKING let us pause,
And wonder who enslaved it, for what cause.
A DANGEROU is what we’ll hope to see:
DANGEROUS CROSSINGs certainly abound.
Now will they leap across from tree to tree,
Or buck the passing traffic on the ground?
— Ralph P. Boas Jr.
Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush –
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever –
I dared not
(For reasons that I failed to understand),
Though I knew I should act at once.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching
Night after night.
Night after night
He came, and I saw him crouching,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone –
Though I knew I should act at once,
For reasons that I failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
A shape amid the shadows,
Blackness that moved.
Peering furtively from behind a bush,
I saw him, for the first time,
Entering the lonely house with my wife.
— J.A. Lindon
In making up newspapers–that is, in piecing together paragraphs into columns–two separate items may sometimes be jumbled together with amazing results. Thus, the New Haven Journal announced in one paragraph that ‘The large cast-iron wheel, revolving nine hundred times a minute, exploded in that city yesterday after a long and painful illness. Deceased was a prominent thirty-second degree Mason,’ and in another that ‘John Fadden, a well-known florist and real-estate broker of Newport, Rhode Island, died in Wardner Russell’s sugar-mill at Crystal Lake, Illinois, on Saturday, doing $3000 damages to the building and injuring several workmen severely.’
— William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892
Love is a verb.
In that sentence, is love a noun or a verb?
Pronouns refer to nouns. In the sentence Francis touched the beggar and cured him, we can “unpack” the pronoun him by replacing it with its referent, the beggar: Francis touched the beggar and cured the beggar.
But what if a sentence has two phrases that refer to each other? The pilot that shot at it hit the Mig that chased him. Now there’s an infinite regress:
The pilot that shot at the Mig that chased the pilot that shot at it hit the Mig that chased the pilot that shot at it.
It seems that no amount of unpacking can resolve these pronouns. Yet most readers can understand the sentence immediately. How are they able to do so?
syrtic
adj. pertaining to quicksand
Comes Christmas merry? Hungry birds; no bright berries;
Rents high, not paid; long bills; empty barns, no peace and prosperity.
Read this backward and it becomes:
Prosperity and peace; no barns empty; bills long paid;
Not high rents; berries bright; no birds hungry; merry Christmas comes.
J.A. Lindon composed the following verse, in which the first line, the first word of each line, and the nth word of each nth line spell the same message:
A merry Christmas and a happy new year!
Merry, merry carols you’ll have sung us;
Christmas remains Christmas even when you are not here,
And though afar and lonely, you’re among us.
A bond is there, a bond at times near broken.
Happy be Christmas then, when happy, clear,
New heart-warm links are forged, new ties betoken
Year ripe with loving giving birth to year.
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