Posted by Eugene Volokh: My Ex-Girlfriend and I Had a Baby a year and a half ago, and my former fiancee will soon (cross my fingers) give birth to my second baby.
This brings up an interesting linguistic point: It is true that my lovely wife (the woman to whom I'm referring in the preceding sentence) is in one literal sense my ex-girlfriend, and also my former fiancee -- she used to be my girlfriend and then my fiancee, and now isn't, so I suppose she must be ex- and former. Yet of course one would never say that she's my ex-girlfriend or former fiancee, unless one wants to be amusing (I set aside whether one is likely to succeed in being amusing). And then the question: What similar phrases can you point to in which a word's (or very short noun phrase's) literal sum-of-the-parts meaning is amusingly different from the meaning that is likely to be understood by normal users of the English language? I'm not just looking for literal inconsistencies (e.g., "ice cream" isn't cream made of ice, but that's not amusing) or for gags based on people's not understanding the components of the phrase (e.g., telling a 10-year-old that he's a homo sapiens, that his actress sister is a thespian, and that his epidermis is showing). Please post examples in the comments, but please read the rules carefully before doing so. Also, try to make them funny! _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
