Holorime
A Holorime or Holorhyme is a literary restraint where an author or poet forces a line or even entire verses to sound identical when spoken, but then composes them of entirely different words. This linguistic oddity is dominated by French poetry, but there are some good examples for English as well, despite the fact that they are nearly impossible to create:
- Flamingo: pale, scenting a latent shark!
- Flaming, opalescent in gala tents — hark!
- O fly, rich Eros — dogtrot, ski, orbit eras put in swart
- Of lyric heros. Dog Trotski or bite Rasputin's wart.
- In Ayrshire hill areas, a cruise, eh, lass?
- Inertia, hilarious, accrues, hélas!
- War, snow, rushin' on.
- Was no Russian? Non.
- There, hoarse as Marshall Ney,
- Their horse's martial neigh.
Two very different sentences that on the surface appear to be nonsense. If the reader carefully reads them and applies the correct usage of homonyms and homophones, he or she will find that they are grammatically correct.
Had
"James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher."
A word puzzle used to demonstrate the ambiguity of the word "had." When correct punctuation is used, the sentence is actually grammatically correct:
"James, while John had had “had”, had had “had had”; “had had” had had a better effect on the teacher."
Buffalo
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."
This word puzzle uses three different meanings of the word "buffalo" and does not need to be punctuated (aside from the ending period) to be grammatically correct.
The three meanings of the word "buffalo" used are as follows:
- Buffalo, New York - a city
- Buffalo - a large land mammal
- buffalo - a verb defined as "bullying, coercive, or confusing."
If you are still confused, here is an example that will make it all seem much more clear:
[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
Buffalo is not the only word in English for which this kind of sentence can be constructed; any word which is both a plural noun and a plural form of a transitive verb will do. Other examples include dice, fish, right and smelt.
ParaprosdokianParaprosdokian is an unexpected turn or twist within a phrase or sentence, usually used for humorous or sarcastic styles of writing. Noted comedians such as Groucho Marx, Mitch Hedberg and George Carlin were examples of writers/humorists who used frequent paraprosdokians.
Some examples:
- "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too." — Mitch Hedberg
- "I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long." — Mitch Hedberg
- "She got her good looks from her father, he's a plastic surgeon." — Groucho Marx
- "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it." — Groucho Marx
- "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don't know." — Groucho Marx
- "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." — Groucho Marx
If you do not know the difference between these words and how to use them, you should be euthanized. Even still, some explanation should be given, if only for the sake of posterity:
- Use there when referring to a place, real or imaginary.
- Put the couch over there.
- Use their to indicate possession.
- The crowd has lost their mind.
- Use they're as a contraction of the words "they" and "are."
- Don't hang out with grammar Nazis, they're a bunch of jerks.
Just like "there, they're and their" above, there seems to be a lot of confusion about which form of this homophone to use in which case of a sentence. I would like to think that people usually make these mistakes more often because of errors during typing, or because they are trying to be funny in a chat room, but ultimately there will always be some moron who actually does screw this one up. So, to reiterate, these are the correct definitions and usages of the words:
- Your - this word has a few meanings, but the most common usage of the word is as a pronoun that indicates possession. For example, the following sentence uses this form of the homophone correctly:
- "I really like your cats."
Your can also be used to demonstrate single parts of a whole:
- "Take your cats, for instance."
Please note, the word "your" should never indicate the act of being.
- You're - a contraction of two words: you and are. This word is used to indicate being:
- "You're being a jerk."
- Yore - you might think that nobody could ever confuse this word with the two words listed above, but stranger things have happened on the internet. The word "yore" is a noun that means "of ago" or an obsolete time era that has gone past. For example:
- "In days of yore, she had a nice dress."
Also known as "logorrhoea," Prolixity is being overly verbose in writing. Prolixity involves over-use of simile, metaphor, redundant phrases, too much description, and restating the obvious. There is no mistake that the word logorrhoea sounds like and rhymes with the word diarrhea. Both explain an uncontrolled outflow from a body's orifice; they just are on opposite ends of the body.
Several words in the English language are spelled the same but have different meanings. These are called heteronyms. By using more than one heteronym in a sentence or phase, a writer may be able to produce a funny or profound result. Essentially, an Antanaclasis is a word used in two contrasting (and often with the intent of being comic) senses.
Here are some examples:
- If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.
- If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Benjamin Franklin was an eager and prolific creator of antanaclasis:
- Your argument is sound...all sound.
- We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.
