I Love Words

I like words... they are sooo much fun. Here is some word lingo.

Palindrome:
A palindrome is a word or sentence that says the same thing forward and backwards.
Examples:
"Racecar"
"Madam, in Eden I'm Adam" (or just "Madam, I'm Adam.")
"Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?"
And perhaps most famous, "A man, a plan, a canal; Panama."

Semordnilap:
The word "Palindrome" spelled backwards, this is when a word is different spelled backwards, but still means something.
Examples:
"Evil : Live"
"Stressed : Dessert" (Are you stressed? Have dessert.)

Malapropism (Dogsberryism):
A word that sounds like the right word but isn't. Dogsberry was a character in Much Ado About Nothing who frequently used malapropisms. Mrs. Malaprop was a character in a play who did the same type of thing.
Examples:
"Brudder, you got a preposition and that thing will give you a conclusion of the brain."
"We heard the ocean is infatuated with sharks" (infested)
"The ironing is delicious." (irony)
"Allow me to decapitate myself."

Simile
Two words that mean the same thing.

Examples:
Large : Big
Happy : Content : Joyful

Jail : Prison

Beautiful : Gorgeous

Homophones:

Words that are spelled/pronounced the same but have different meanings. I wrote this one myself.

Example:

"I pared a pair of pears for the fare of my fair fair of foul fowl."

Pun:

A corny play on words. These breed when packing corn early in the morning, believe me. They can be quite punny when you're sleep-depraved. (oops... malapropism.)

Examples (from corn):

"I'm STALKING you" (hit with a corn stalk)

"Lend me your EAR"

"One of the girls was going to CORNell." (Actually, she was.)

Onomatopoeia

A word that sounds like what it is, usually sounds.

Examples:

"Click"

"Clang"

"Boom"

"Tick Tock"

"Hum"

"Cock-a-doodle-doooooo!"

Hyperbole

A big overstatement/exaggeration.

Examples:

"I could eat a horse!"

"I would rather die than do my math."(Hmm, maybe not a hyperbole in my case...)

"It's harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matt 19)

Alliteration
A sentence with all the same sound/first letter. Sometimes they are also tongue-twisters.

Examples:
"The Sixth Sheik's sixth sheep's sick."

"She sells seashells by the seashore."

"Yaks yodel, yammer, and yip."

"The Brillig Blog"

Oxymoron:
An oxymoron is a word or phrase that contridicts itself. For example:
"Alone together" (If you're alone you can't be together.)
"Jumbo shrimp" (Shrimp is another word for tiny, "big small")
"Deafening silence"
"Sweet sorrows"

In fact, here's a whole poem fully of oxymorons. My grandfather taught me this poem. Just in case you wanted to know. ;)

"Ladies of the men's club,
I come before you to stand behind you
To tell you a tale you know nothing about
Admission is free so pay at the door,
Pull up a seat to sit on the floor
- One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other,
- One was blind and the other couldn't see
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout "hooray!"
- A paralyzed donkey passing by,
Kicked the blind man in the eye,
Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,
- A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And went and killed the two dead boys,
If you don't believe my lie is true,
Ask the blind man, he saw it too.


And oh, ascii art.

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