{"id":2594,"date":"1997-06-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1997-06-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1997\/06\/29\/zeugma\/"},"modified":"2018-01-14T12:51:45","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T20:51:45","slug":"zeugma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1997\/06\/29\/zeugma\/","title":{"rendered":"z: Time and the Mailman"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>\"Zeugma\" is one of my favorite words. It would probably be my very favorite word if only it were pronounced \/'zOig m@\/ (as I assumed when I first saw it) instead of \/'zug m@\/, a pronunciation that seems boring compared to the spelling. (For a pronunciation key, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1997\/03\/16\/kunsistunsi\/\">column k<\/a> or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpl.hp.com\/personal\/Evan_Kirshenbaum\/IPA\/english.html\">ASCII IPA<\/a> page.)<\/p>\r\n<p>The best thing about the word, however, is neither its pronunciation nor its spelling, but its meaning. It derives from Latin and Greek words having to do with joining; it refers to using a single occurrence of a verb to have multiple meanings and multiple objects, all in the same sentence. (The overloaded verb is often being used in an idiomatic or metaphorical sense as well as a literal one.) For instance, the sentence \"He played first base, second fiddle, and 'Three Blind Mice'\" provides three rather different uses of the verb \"to play.\"<\/p>\r\n<p>I'm uncertain what use people originally had for the term \"zeugma,\" other than describing mistakes made by people unfamiliar with English (and possibly providing a name for an ancient city that spanned the Euphrates river). These days I use the term to discuss intentional instances, created for humorous effect:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>She batted her eyelashes and third.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He played for keeps and money.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He bought her story and a beer.<\/li>\r\n  <li>She entered the data and his room.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He flew the coop and the kite.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He fell back on his sword and his position of power.<\/li>\r\n  <li>She gathered her wits and her knitting.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He hid his feelings and the ball.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He fished for compliments and trout.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He milked the situation and the cow.<\/li>\r\n  <li>She stayed his execution and at the hotel.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He rang the bell and up her purchases.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>(All of the above from Michael Bernstein, with a couple of modifications by me.)<\/p>\r\n<p>A few examples from Jim Moskowitz:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>He stole the show and my wallet.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I grew alfalfa and bored.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Do you have a cold, or a sister?<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>A couple of my own:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>It was curtains for him and the window.<\/li>\r\n  <li>She carried a sack of groceries, a child, and on.<\/li>\r\n  <li>The journalists covered the assassination and up the conspiracy.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He bit the bullet, her hand, and the dust.<\/li>\r\n  <li>She bought the 1994 election, an antique cereal bowl, and the farm.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>And finally, a few examples slightly less suited for polite company, from someone who prefers to remain anonymous:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>She killed time and the mailman.<\/li>\r\n  <li>She aroused suspicion and men.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He drowned his sorrows and his cat.<\/li>\r\n  <li>He screwed up the assignment and over his partner.<\/li>\r\n  <li>She came up through the ranks, over last night, repeatedly, and to realize the error of her ways.<\/li>\r\n  <li>She jumped his bones and over the dog.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<hr \/>\r\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/1997\/06\/30\/zeugma-comments\/\">Reader comments page<\/a><\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-lowercase-1"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3206,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions\/3206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}