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Fumblerule
A fumblerule is a rule of language or linguistic style, humorously written in such a way that it breaks this rule. The science editor George L. Trigg published a list of such rules in 1979. The term ''fumblerules'' was coined in a list of such rules compiled by William Safire on Sunday, 4 November 1979, in his column "On Language" in ''The New York Times''. Safire later authored a book titled ''Fumblerules: A Lighthearted Guide to Grammar and Good Usage'', which was reprinted in 2005 as '' How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar''. Examples * "Avoid clichés like the plague." * "Don't listen to any advice." * " Ending a sentence with a preposition is one thing that I will not put up with." * "English is the '' crème de la crème'' of all languages." * "Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation." * "It is bad to carelessly split infinitives." * "Never use no double negatives." * "No sentence fragments." * "Parentheses are (almost always) unnecessary." * "The passive voi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-referential Humor
Self-referential humor, also known as self-reflexive humor, self-aware humor, or meta humor, is a type of comedic expression that—either directed toward some other subject, or openly directed toward itself—is self-referential in some way, intentionally alluding to the very person who is expressing the humor in a comedic fashion, or to some specific aspect of that same comedic expression. Here, ''meta'' is used to describe that the joke explicitly talks about other jokes, a usage similar to the words metadata (data about data), metatheatrics (a play within a play as in ''Hamlet'') and metafiction. Self-referential humor expressed discreetly and surrealistically is a form of bathos. In general, self-referential humor often uses hypocrisy, oxymoron, or paradox to create a contradictory or otherwise absurd situation that is humorous to the audience. History Old Comedy of Classical Athens is held to be the first—in the extant sources—form of self-referential comedy. Aristop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-reference
Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one's own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields. In natural or formal languages, self-reference occurs when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philosophy, self-reference also refers to the ability of a subject to speak of or refer to itself, that is, to have the kind of thought expressed by the first person nominative singular pronoun "I" in English. Self-reference is studied and has applications in mathematics, philosophy, computer programming, second-order cybernetics, and linguistics, as well as in humor. Self-referential statements are sometimes paradoxical, and can also be considered recursive. In logic, mathematics and computing In classical philosophy, paradoxes were created b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Safire
William Lewis Safire (; Safir; December 17, 1929 – September 27, 2009Safire, William (1986). ''Take My Word for It: More on Language.'' Times Books. . p. 185.) was an American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He was a long-time syndicated political columnist for ''The New York Times'' and wrote the "On Language" column in ''The New York Times Magazine'' about popular etymology, new or unusual usages, and other language-related topics. Early life and education Safire was born William Lewis Safir in New York City, the son of Ida ( Panish) and Oliver Craus Safir. His family was Jewish and of Romanian origin on his father's side. Safire later added an "e" to his surname to better convey its pronunciation, while his brothers Leonard Safir and Matthew P. Safir continued to use the original spelling. Safire graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, a specialized public high school in New York City. He attended S. I. Newhouse School of Public C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sentence Fragment
In grammar, sentence and clause structure, commonly known as sentence composition, is the classification of sentences based on the number and kind of clauses in their syntactic structure. Such division is an element of traditional grammar. Typology of clauses In standard English, sentences are composed of five ''clause'' patterns: # Subject + Verb (intransitive)''Example:'' She runs. # Subject + Verb (transitive) + Object''Example:'' She runs the meeting. # Subject + Verb (linking) + Subject Complement (adjective, noun, pronoun)''Example:'' Abdul is happy. Jeanne is a person. I am she. # Subject + Verb (transitive) + Indirect Object + Direct Object''Example:'' She made me a pie.This clause pattern is a derivative of S+V+O, transforming the object of a preposition into an indirect object of the verb, as the example sentence in transformational grammar is actually "She made a pie for me". # Subject + Verb (transitive) + Object + Object Complement''Example:'' They made him happy.They ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word Games
A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations. The concept of "word" is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own. Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jargon File
The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT AI Lab, the Stanford University centers and institutes#Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANET Artificial intelligence, AI/Lisp programming language, LISP/PDP-10 communities, including BBN Technologies, Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), Carnegie Mellon University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It was published in paperback form in 1983 as ''The Hacker's Dictionary'' (edited by Guy L. Steele Jr., Guy Steele) and revised in 1991 as ''The New Hacker's Dictionary'' (ed. Eric S. Raymond; third edition published 1996). The concept of the file began with the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) that came out of early TX-0 and PDP-1 hackers in the 1950s, where the term ''hacker'' emerged and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epimenides Paradox
The Epimenides paradox reveals a problem with self-reference in logic. It is named after the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos (alive circa 600 BC) who is credited with the original statement. A typical description of the problem is given in the book ''Gödel, Escher, Bach'', by Douglas Hofstadter: A paradox of self-reference arises when one considers whether it is possible for Epimenides to have spoken the truth. Mythology of lying Cretans According to Ptolemaeus Chennus, Thetis and Medea had once argued in Thessaly over which was the most beautiful; they appointed the Cretan Idomeneus as the judge, who gave the victory to Thetis. In her anger, Medea called all Crete, Cretans liars, and cursed them to never say the truth. Logical paradox Thomas Fowler (university administrator), Thomas Fowler (1869) states the paradox as follows: "Epimenides the Cretan says, 'that all the Cretans are liars,' but Epimenides is himself a Cretan; therefore he is himself a liar. But if ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discourse Marker
A discourse marker is a word or a phrase that plays a role in managing the flow and structure of discourse. Since their main function is at the level of discourse (sequences of utterances) rather than at the level of utterances or sentences, discourse markers are relatively syntax-independent and usually do not change the truth conditional meaning of the sentence. They can also indicate what a speaker is doing on a variety of different planes. Examples of discourse markers include the particles ''oh'', ''well'', ''now'', ''then'', ''you know'', and ''I mean'', and the discourse connectives ''so'', ''because'', ''and'', ''but'', and ''or''. The term ''discourse marker'' was popularized by Deborah Schiffrin in her 1987 book ''Discourse Markers''. Usage in English Common discourse markers used in the English language include ''you know'', ''actually'', ''basically'', ''like'', ''I mean'', ''okay'' and ''so''. Discourse markers come from varied word classes, such as adverbs (''well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diminutive
A diminutive is a word obtained by modifying a root word to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment, and sometimes to belittle something or someone. A ( abbreviated ) is a word-formation device used to express such meanings. A is a diminutive form with two diminutive suffixes rather than one. Purpose Diminutives are often employed as nicknames and pet names when speaking to small children and when expressing extreme tenderness and intimacy to an adult. The opposite of the diminutive form is the augmentative. In some contexts, diminutives are also employed in a pejorative sense to denote that someone or something is weak or childish. For example, one of the last Western Roman emperors was Romulus Augustus, but his name was diminutivized to "Romulus Augustulus" to express his powerlessness. Formation In many languages, diminutives are word forms that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Passive Voice
In English, the passive voice is marked by a subject that is followed by a stative verb complemented by a past participle. For example: The recipient of a sentence's action is referred to as the patient. In sentences using the active voice, the subject is the of the action—referred to as the agent. Above, the agent is omitted entirely, but it may also be included adjunctively while maintaining the passive voice: The initial examples rewritten in the active voice yield: The English passive voice typically involves forms of the verbs ''to be'' or ''to get'' followed by a passive participle as the subject complement—sometimes referred to as a ''passive verb''. English allows a number of additional passive constructions that are not possible in many other languages with analogous passive formations to the above. A sentence's indirect object may be promoted to the subject position—e.g. ''Tom was given a bag''. Similarly, the complement of a preposition may be promoted, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parenthesis
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their names, that vary between British English, British and American English. "Brackets", without further qualification, are in British English the ... marks and in American English the ... marks. Other symbols are repurposed as brackets in specialist contexts, such as International Phonetic Alphabet#Brackets and transcription delimiters, those used by linguists. Brackets are typically deployed in symmetric pairs, and an individual bracket may be identified as a "left" or "right" bracket or, alternatively, an "opening bracket" or "closing bracket", respectively, depending on the Writing system#Directionality, directionality of the context. In casual writing and in technical fields such as computing or linguistic analysis of grammar, brackets ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
