I'm giving a talk Monday where the topic of zeugma avoidance is going to come up. I'd like to give a familiar quote -- preferably from a famous song, play, novel, or movie -- that contains a zeugma, which is to say "The use of a word to modify or govern two or more words when it is ... appropriate to each but in a different way, as in to wage war and peace or On his fishing trip, he caught three trout and a cold."
As you might gather from my question, custom-made examples such as the ones in this quote don't satisfy me; I want something that's already relatively well-known. The only such example I could find in a quick Google search was "You held your breath and the door for me" from Alanis Morissette's Head Over Feet, but I'm looking for something even better known (or at least even cooler). So if you could pass some along, I'd be much obliged. Thanks!
Related Posts (on one page):
- My Favorite Zeugma:
- Blegging for Zeugmas:
- Zeugma Avoidance -- a Canon of Construction:
If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice.
I'm not sure if that quite fits, but if it does, it's way cooler than Alanis Morissette.
"Well I've lost my equilibrium and my car keys and my pride..."
"And he said, as he hastened to put out the lights, the wine, his cigar and the cat:"
It looks like that's the point of the talk. Never mind.
Me, 1985.
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes Counsel take - and sometimes Tea.
-Canto III Lines 7-8
Whether the Nymph shall break Diana' law,
Or some frail China jar receive a Flaw,
Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade,
Forget her Pray'rs, or miss a Masquerade,
Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball;
Or whether Heav'n has doom'd that Shock must fall
-Canto II Lines 105-110
"Have some madeira, m'dear" is by Flanders and Swann, not Tom Lehrer, who were, as I think about it, more or less contemporaries, but had different audiences: Flanders and Swann being listened by the parents of those who listened to Tom Lehrer.
Bob Kanefsky's The Girl Who'd Never Been..., which parodies both Madeira M'dear and Michelle Dockerty's The Girl That's Never Been, has the zeugma "Just a dissipated creep who wears a Rolex on his wrist, on her nerves, too much cologne, and down her power to resist."
"Area Man Has Asshole, Old Navy Written All Over Him."
Doesn't quite fit, but I've always liked OutKast's "I takes no shit like, um, stopped up comodes".
"All I'm looking for is a place to lay my hat and a few friends."
- The Stampeders, Sweet City Woman
I see said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.
"She blew my nose and then she blew my mind."
"Honky Tonk Woman," The Rolling Stones
That's gotta be BOTH "even better known" and "even cooler"
What do I win? ;-)
"New President Feels Nation's Pain, Breasts."
I have a feeling that this sort of turn is all over the place in classic song lyrics; someone should ask Mark Steyn, who'd probably come up with half a dozen examples out of Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter in a minute. Unfortunately I can't remember any. The only one that leaps to mind is from a song attacking grocers written by a character in Chesterton's The Flying Inn, which ends:
The Grocer trembles; for his time
Just like his weight is short.
[For those who don't understand the reference, it's to a grocer with crooked scales, who might give you six ounces of something while charging you for seven.]
And this isn't quite a zeugma, but the principle's the same, and I've always liked it. It's Florence King, attacking Shere Hite and her surveys of female attitudes towards men, with a bunch of multiple-choice questions:
----------
3. Check the word that best completes the sentence: "The worst thing about men is their im—"
(a) potence
(b) modesty
(c) placability
(d) pertinence
(e) perviousness
(f) petigo
-------
There's a bunch like that, all involving several words with prefixes and one without (unkind, unavailable, unconcerned, unstable, uncouth, unctuous; presumptuous, pretentious, prevaricating, preoccupied, preposterous, preppy; &c.)
Doesn't quite fit, but I've always liked OutKast's "I takes no shit like, um, stopped up comodes".
Yeah... see most rap zeugma isn't really zeugma, it's zeugma-like-similes. For instance, Xzibit once said that he "beat the odds like Ike [Turner] beat on his first wife." But I'll find a good example.
You've always believed that the children are our future, which is true insofar as most are cruel, violent, and short.
Godspeed. I have to abandon the quest. Gotta go eat BBQ (and crow if Cal loses).
Go Hawkeyes, by the way.
"When he asked 'what in heaven?' she made no reply, up her mind, and a dash for the door."
The example you give is a humorous mis-yoking, (the greek for zeugma is based on 'yoking.' Here's one definition, from VirtualSalt.com: a grammatically correct linkage (or yoking together) of two or more parts of speech by another part of speech.) Your example is a prozeugma intentionally tweaked at the end (syllepsis, sure, but most accurately a paraprosdokian, a phrase that has ends in a word that requires reconsideration of one of the previous words). So it's a zeugma, just like it's a phrase or a clause, but it's not exactly representative of all zeugmas. To focus on that construction alone would be, well, maybe funny but not, well, right.
There's no need to avoid zeugma, when used well; in fact, it's just an efficient form of parallel construction. The example you gave above, and what I read of the offerings from the comments, are more properly paraprosdokians.
ice
But here goes nothing:
Groucho Marx--"You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff."[This one is safely a zeugma, but not his funniest.]
Same source: "Time flies like and arrow; fruit flies like a banana." [Is it a zeugma if the word shared by both sentences is a verb in one and a noun in the other? Is that syllepsis?]
That's one of my all-time favorites to employ when I want to confuse my sons and their friends. Go ahead, try it on a eight or nine year old.
I use Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried in my Vietnam War course. I know he uses zeugmas in the title story, when he makes use of the various meanings of "carry." The book's at my office, so I don't have an exact quote. But let me know if it would be useful. Here's one, as best my memory can reconstruct it:
Kiowa carried a hatchet, his Bible, and a distrust of the white man.
My favorite:
Free Speech and Beer. (I can't recall the source)
But I think you are missing the point, "arms" is the object of both "keep" and "bear" , so it is a different animal than your example.
Having fled into the wastelands, the disgraced grammarian was forced to catch and eat crow.
Oliver Goldsmith
Elmo was shrouded in mystery and a towel.
John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich: "Egad sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox."
John Wilkes: "That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
-------
"Our wistful little star was far too high
A teardrop kissed your lips, and so did I"
- Paul Francis Webster, "The Shadow of Your Smile" (music by Johnny Mandel)
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. --Benjamin Franklin
My personal favorite from Latin class:
Elmo was shrouded in mystery and a towel.
Mine: Semper ubi sub ubi.
-You hold your tongue almost as well as I hold my temper.
-The city he builds will bear my name, the woman he loves will bear my son.
-What you have buried in the Nile will remain buried in your heart
-It's a wicked lie spun by Ramses. (Moses holds up a piece of cloth) Mother, did Ramses spin this?
"[A]ll you're supposed to do is every once in a while give the boys a little tea and sympathy." (Robert Anderson)
But "tea and sympathy" seems collectively to have taken on its own identity.
Broke into the old apartment
This is where we used to live
Broken glass, broke and hungry
Broken hearts and broken bones
via Wikipedia.
I think you will have trouble finding non-joking zeugmas where half of the phrase is idiomatic. Perhaps "the right to bear arms and children" (no popular/recognizable source, sadly.)
Uses "get" as an auxiliary verb and then in the simple sense of "receive". Quoted on Literal-Minded
An older Language Log post talks about "WTF coordinations" which is perhaps more what you're after; Scalia's argument is effectively that the minority's interpretation of "keep and bear arms" creates a WTF coordination, which can be taken as evidence against that interpretation. One Language Log example is:
It was the dinner rush at the Hungry Pilgrim, but the chef just had to speak to his broker. With cell phone in hand, he sped for the walk-in cooler, because that's the best place to keep and talk turkey.
But if this world keeps right on turnin’
for the better or the worse,
And all he gets is older and around,
from the rockin’ of the cradle
To the rollin’ of the hearse,
The goin’ up was worth the comin’ down.
Ah, that was Gilbert Ryle, Concept of Mind.
The actual zeugma is:
From J.L.Austin, "She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair".
Ah, that was Gilbert Ryle, Concept of Mind.
Both wrong. It was actually from Frege's Deep Thoughts after Mixing Port and Sherry.
(Teife Gedanken nach dem Zusammentrinken von Portwein und Sherry)
Why not just point out that if bear and bare were not just homophones but also had the same spelling then "to keep and bear arms" wouldn't mean to possess weapons and roll up one's sleeves.
Cot off his nose.
A Thanksgiving Tale
It was the dinner rush at the Hungry Pilgrim, but the chef just had to speak to his broker. With cell phone in hand, he sped for the walk-in cooler, because that's the best place to keep and talk turkey.
Note that "the place to keep and talk turkey" parallels "the right to keep and bear arms" in that both are noun phrases, and both include an idiom (one real, the other supposed), and both sentences are non-sensical if read as idioms.
But they are different in this respect, the Thanksgiving Tale can not be read any other way because "talk turkey" is a true idiom -that combination of words fit the definition of idiom in that "talk turkey" just doesn't make sense if read literally.
If one were to read the Second Amendment as the dissent urges, it also would be non-sensical. However we have a choice the Second Amendment.
The line "Get out of my dreams, get into my car" is taken from Ringo Starr's You're Sixteen:
You walked out of my dreams,
And into my car
Now you're my angel divine
You're sixteen
You're beautiful
And you're mine.
Would you hold it against me?
The Bellamy Brothers, from a song by the same name.
It strikes me (**THWACK!!!** OUCH!!!!) that they are a method, possibly that falls naturally to hand, of compacting information into minimum coherent structure.
I always thought it was "into my life".
Oops.
Super-Duper Precedent Bonus Points for the VCer who can come up with a zeugma based on the word 'zeugma.'
Jim Cinadr
You reminded me of the Monty Python Kiler Joke skit;
Hitler: "My dog has no nose."
Hitler Youth: "But how does smell, Mein Fu:hrer?"
H: "Awful!"
Question: how does one pronounce "zeugma"? (Was that and the etymologic origin of the word in Eugene's previous post? I'll go look, and maybe even crack a dictionary.) And how come I never heard of it before? Was my education so deficient (we covered synecdoche, litotes, and those more common figures of speech in 12th grade English)? Or, is this kind of esoteric stuff, with people creating zeugmas without knowing it is they are up to?
The question begged:
Which word in the Second Amendemnt is governing "two or more words when it is ... appropriate to each but in a different way"?
The Miller Court had no difficulty equating keep and bear arms with possession or use of certain instruments.
Note that "such an instrument" relates back to "arms" of the Second Amendment, and it is clear that the Miller court understood the words "keep" and "bear" to refer to the same thing, in the same way.
Note that "bear such an instrument" is plainly not an idiom.
"The Queen, sir, is not a subject."
In case you don't know, Williams was a baseball player and Sayer a pop singer.
By the way, Ringo's song "You're Sixteen" is a cover of a song from the '50s or early '60s.
"He gobbled like a turkey and down his dinner."
Gwinje is right - the lyrics from Billy Ocean are from Get outta my Dreams, Get into my Car on the "Tear Down these Walls" album. Very similar to Ringo’s words which as noted as from an earlier time.
From wikipedia:
"You're Sixteen" is a song written by the Sherman Brothers (Robert B. Sherman &Richard M. Sherman).
The original 1960 version of "You're Sixteen" by Johnny Burnette is featured prominently on the 1973 motion picture soundtrack of American Graffiti.
Same thought, though I like Burnette/Starr version better
I don't know exactly where it came from but it might be Richard M. Stallman or one of the other founders of the Open Source movement. They needed a way to explain the difference between what they saw as two different meanings to "free software": Free (as in Free Beer) meaning it comes at no cost, and Free (as in Free Speech) meaning the user is free to view the source code, modify it and redistribute it.
This leaves me with the question: is "free software" an auto-zeugma? It can mean one of two things, or both simultaneously, where the word "free" is (potentially) meaning different things but applying to the same object.
Ned "This pizza is harder to swallow than evolution."
"Fish and visitors stink in three days."
Benjamin Franklin
what's wrong with arms for hugging? :-)
I have not seen that on a bumper sticker; but have read that the kumbaya crowd loved that slogan (especially back in the 1980s protesting against Reagan's policies). So, it is not likely to be on a Lexus - probably VWs
I have not found anything to suggest that "the right to keep and bear arms" would fall within the meaning of Zeugma or related terms, even accepting for sake of argument that "bear arms" is an idiom as used there.
As in the above definition, most sources describe Zeugma as a verb modifying two or more objects or a verb with two subjects. But I have yet to find an example of a zeugmatic form containing two verb forms relating to one object, and that object takes on two completely different meanings in the same instance.
I'm not sure this works, but do you think it's close?
"I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness i' th' posture of a whore."
Fish and visitors stink after three days.
http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/quotable/singlehtml.htm
Franklin appears to be quite fond of zeugmas. I guess Poor Richards was sort of the Onion of its day. ;-)
So it's below freezing tonight and we have no hot water. Again. I washed my hair in the sink, which makes tangles and me dizzy.
"She was a thief, you got to belief, she stole my heart and my cat."
"The rich get richer and the poor get children."
"She was running low on faith and gasoline," from Jesus Take the Wheel;
"Take your records, take your freedom," from You'll Think of Me;
"Mama lives by the Bible; the Bible lives by the bed," from One Wing in the Fire