Is A Part Of
The good folks at the mental_floss blog have been so good at inspiring my writing lately that I have dug into my deep pockets to acquire a boatload of back issues of their magazine (also because I plan on stalking the editors until they publish some of MY trivial output there). One of their items last Friday was on the topic of “Tom Swifties”, a quotation in which the verb or descriptive adverb makes a pun from the quote (my definition is less restrictive than the one from m_f’s Blogger David).
You want examples? Wendell asked instantly (you see, ‘example’ is a synonym for ‘instance’ and… nevermind)
“I didn’t do well in the test,” Tom said degradedly.
“Hey, you’re standing on my foot!” said Tom standoffishly.
“I love hot dogs,” said Tom with relish.
If you still don’t get the idea, in the m_f comments, I linked to a MetaFilter thread that was a Tom Swifties festival (where I was the third most prolific punster) and to the original list of Swifties that was in the original post. (And now I’m linking all of them here! I think I have achieved meta-meta-metadom!)
By the way, I am a BIG fan of Matt Haughey’s Community Weblog, Wendell said metaphorically.
