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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Oh if only I COULD prescribe irony tablets. In that context "irony" would perhaps be faux iron, like the not-real-chocolate found in McDonald's "chocolatly chip cookies." (Isn't it pathetic? The name only says that the substance is somehow similar to chocolate. Legalese on a cookie...)
RE: "I discovered that the modern Latin word used in rhetoric for irony is enantiosis..."
I guess then that "anenantiosis" could be used, but I am not sure that I like the sing-song effect. The politically correct term would be "enantiotically impaired" or better yet "enantiotically deprived."
Have you ever seen the list of words supposedly submitted for a contest in the New York Times, where the condition is you change a word by a single letter. Thus you can either add, change or delete any one letter, and then you provide the new definition for your word based on its new sound and/or spelling. One of my favorite words from that list was "sarchasm," which was described as the gulf of understanding between one who utters a sarcastic remark and the intended recipient who didn't grasp the irony.
The whole list was very clever. (Many of you probably contributed to it, come to think of it.) I'll see if I can dig it up from my files.
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Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
I don't really have an expression for this - perhaps "ironyclad" or "ironyproof"?
One thing I have noticed is that people who (a) don't understand irony, but (b) DO know what it is and who the people are who apt to use it, stare at you intently when you say something that they really aren't sure about. They sit with a half smile on their faces, frantically working out behind the smile whether or not your statement was intended to be ironic and if it was ironic was it aimed at them, and worst of all, was it poking the borax at them?
Does this sound like someone you know?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
I found a list of those words from the contest, which is actually in the Washington Post. I'll post it as a new thread in the "Wordplay And Fun" area.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
In reply to:
One thing I have noticed is that people who (a) don't understand irony, but (b) DO know what it is and who the people are who apt to use it, stare at you intently when you say something that they really aren't sure about.
Reminds me of one of my favourite remarks from Jane Austen:
Though nothing
could be more polite than Lady Middleton's behaviour to
Elinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all.
Because they neither flattered herself nor her children,
she could not believe them good-natured; and because they
were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps
without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical;
but THAT did not signify. It was censure in common use,
and easily given.
Sense and Sensibility Chapter 36
Bingley
Bingley
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
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re: (Roxanne) "What a funny, witty movie."
Steve Martin - what a witty, funny guy. Have you USA'ns voted him a National Treasure yet? Do so post haste (please).
I remember seeing an old video of him from his early stand up days. In a 70 minute show he told 4 jokes!!!! In between times he played the banjo and walked around with a plastic arrow seemingly stuck through his head - and it was uproarious!! I ached for days from laughing too much.
stales
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Steve Martin occasionally writes for the magazine "The New Yorker" in the "Shouts and Murmurs" column. One of the funniest things I've ever read was his piece on the "Times New Roman Corporation" announcing a shortage of periods. The gist of it was to urge people to use alternative punctuation until the supply of periods could be replentished. One of the things that really cracked me up was that they had plenty of ellipses [?spelling? Alex wonders] but no periods. And of course the piece itself is written with but a single period, which is at the very end.
I'll see if I can find it and post it here.
One of the great things about Mr. Martin is that he is a master of both physical and intellectual comedy. It's so admirable that the same man who can write such funny columns can act so silly as well. Take for example the scene in "Roxanne" when he falls out of the tree and lands in front of a group of old ladies. To cover up his real reason for having been up in the tree he announces that he was abducted by aliens who came to earth to make love to older women "because they really knew what they were doing." He describes the aliens as having suction cups for feet, and proceeds to imitate them, walking around making pop! pop! pop! noises with his mouth. My eyes are actually watering with joy just to remember it.
It would be interesting to see Martin as a funny/witty character in a serious story, like maybe _Hamlet_. It's been years since I've seen it, but I thought Bill Murray was excellent in his remake of "The Razor's Edge."
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Joined: Aug 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
One of the great things about Mr. Martin is that he is a master of both physical and intellectual comedy.
wonder if that's related to the (to me) unusual fact that his PhD is, quite literally, a doctorate of philosophy 
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 96 |
Head's up----is also used on the golf course, but there most people say "Fore" which means "look out", "watch out" or it is just a polite way that golfer's say "move". But my dad always said "head's up" when he was trying to get us kids to "pay attention" so, I guess "head's up" sound less rude to a co-worker than "Pay attention"!!!! enthusiast
enthusiast
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