Polysemous though she wants a cracker
Posted by Bob on March 25, 2002
In Reply to: Polysemous people posted by ESC on March 25, 2002
: From editorandpublisher.com
: MARCH 25, 2002
: Copy Editors May Be the Most Polysemous
: The Phenomenon Of Punny Headlines
: By Wayne Robins
: NEW YORK -- Headline writers, caption scribblers, and copy editors may be the most polysemous people on Earth. So concludes Valerie Collins, who has a fascinating article about journalism and acts of polysemy in the most recent edition of The Vocabula Review (www.vocabula.com), an erudite online journal dedicated to excellence in the English language.
: But first: Polysemy? "The phenomenon of having or being open to several different meanings," speaketh Webster. Puns and their cute cousins, paragrams, are vehicles for polysemous expression. "Sidebars, subtitles, leads, and picture captions provide ... opportunities for extended punning," Collins explains mainly in the plain (she lives in Barcelona, Spain).
: "Admittedly," she wrote, "the dividing lines between true wit, cleverness ... and groan-induction are fuzzy." It's so much a matter of individual taste that using such tools is really in the I of the beholder.
to parrot the conventional wisdom, puns are the lowest fume of hammer, but are puns alone solo?
- So bad that it's wonderful TheFallen
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TheUnlurker 03/27/02
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Berg 03/27/02
- It's wonderful
Bob 03/27/02
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game TheFallen 03/28/02
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game TheFallen 03/28/02
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Bob 03/27/02
- It's wonderful R.
Berg 03/27/02
- So wonderful that it's bad
TheUnlurker 03/27/02
- So bad that it's wonderful
James Briggs 03/26/02
- So bad that it's wonderful Marian
03/26/02