Tuesday, 20 June 2023

"A VERY STABLE GENIUS": Ancillary Funky Anagrams

This post-hoc post picks up on the theme of February's collection. Therein, 97 anagrams were displayed for the book title "A VERY STABLE GENIUS". (We have referred to this original collection on today's slides as "the main list").


































Readers who are enjoying this material and have unlimited tolerance for wordplay might wish to pursue some more of this doggerel by clicking HERE.



GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR WEB-EXPLORERS: 
To resume the sequence of daily titillations on our related blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings at the bottom of the page, and check the daily offerings for any month from the start of 2020 until December 2024. 
As of December 2024, there are 1800 unique entries available on the daily blog, displaying individual poems (often illustrated) and wordplay, but also with some photo-collages and parody song-lyrics. Most of their key elements are also presented here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections, such as this one. The "Daily" format also has the advantage of including some song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.

Thursday, 15 June 2023

Reprehensible MODERN HISTORY

CURRENT CONTENTS:
Cantankerous leaders
Clannishness
Confederate states
Crimean War
Democracy (18th century version)
Emperor of Elba
Franco-German (Cannes of Worms)
Italo-Turkish war
Submarine warfare (Charleston SC)
Broken Arrow (3 stanzas, a 'brief saga')

  









Authors' Note: More than 150 years after the conclusion of the American Civil War, the role of the Confederacy continues to generate high emotions.







Further enlightenment on this topic can be obtained by viewing a post entitled "Able Ere Elba". Click HERE.


Authors' Note:
nachbarlich (NAKH-bahr-likh): neighborly 
l'après-guerre (la-preh-GAYR): period immediately after the Second World War in France, approximately 1945-1948

Cannes (KAN): French town on the Côte d'Azur, famous for its luxury hotels and villas, and for its international film festival

Worms (VORMZ): German town (sometimes pronounced by anglophones as WUHRMZ) of about the same size as Cannes and Limerick, famed for its production of liebfraumilch
 




Authors' Note: The Italo-Turkish War, also known as the Turco-Italian War, 1911–1912, was among the neo-colonial adventures pushed by the European powers (Britain, France, Italy, etc.) who took advantage of the decline of Ottoman Turkey just before the outbreak of the First World War. The territories conquered by the Italians (most of current-day Libya and also the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea) remained under their control through the Second World War, with Mussolini's National Fascist party in power in the Kingdom of Italy for most of this period (1922–1943).
The treaty to end the conflict was named after the resort facility in Lausanne, Switzerland at which it was signed by the belligerents, becoming known as the Treaty of Ouchy (oo-SHEE).

SUBMARINE WARFARE - didactic material
Charleston, South Carolina played a disproportionate role in the development and deployment of submarines in warfare. 
You can read all about this in three informative blogposts on our blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense" (here, here, and here), or you could enjoy a song about nuclear submarines during the Cold War by clicking HERE.  



(Note that the three verses of this "brief saga" can be found in more readily legible larger format on the blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense"; click HERE.) 



GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR WEB-EXPLORERS: 
To resume the sequence of daily titillations on our related blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings at the bottom of the page, and check the daily offerings for any month from the start of 2020 until December 2024. 
As of December 2024, there are 1800 unique entries available on the daily blog, displaying individual poems (often illustrated) and wordplay, but also with some photo-collages and parody song-lyrics. Most of their key elements are also presented here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections, such as this one. The "Daily" format also has the advantage of including some song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.


Saturday, 10 June 2023

NATIONAL (and multinational) Verse


CURRENT CONTENTS:
Armenia
Greenland
Haiti
la Francophonie
Iceland
Panama (Canal Zone)
Canada (3 stanzas, a 'brief saga')
France (3 stanzas, a 'brief saga')
America (USA - 3 stanzas, a 'brief saga') 




Authors' Note:

neurasthenia: obsolete term from psychiatry, implying general debility attributed to exhaustion of the nervous system, as discussed here

Armenia, the first country in the world to adopt Christianity, has had disputes with its neighbors for most of its existence. The revered Mt. Ararat is now located geopolitically in Turkey, but is still considered a national symbol of Armenia, and dominates the view from the Armenian capital of Yerevan. Armenia's borders to the east and west currently remain closed owing to hostile relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey.



Authors' Note: This verse, along with Canal Zone (to follow) and fifty-first (preceding) constitutes a trilogy of diplomatic nonsense.

As of 2024, Greenland, with population of 56,000, is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.





Authors' Note
The plight of Haiti, and some of its earlier history, are described in an OEDILF verse by speedysnail  











Authors' Note: Late in 2024, the incumbent US president turned his attention from Canada, a friendly neighbour that he had threatened with massive tariffs, dangling the possibility of a sort of "Anschluss".

His sudden announcement that "excessive" shipping fees across the Panama Canal were a matter of vital national US interest was accompanied by threats to retake control of the Canal Zone, a region that had been under sole Panamanian control since 1979.

The author of the above poem in his prior work acclaim had discussed the role of President Theodore Roosevelt (T.R.) in construction of the Panama Canal, therein revealing the neo-palindrome A man, a plan, if final — Panama.


(Note that the four stanzas of this "brief saga" can be found in more readily legible format on the blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense"; click HERE.)



Note that the three stanzas of this "brief saga" can be found in a more readily legible format on the blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense"; click HERE.) 




(Note that the four stanzas of this "brief saga" can be found in more readily legible format on the blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense"; click HERE.) 


GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR WEB-EXPLORERS: 
To resume the sequence of daily titillations on our related blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings at the bottom of the page, and check the daily offerings for any month from the start of 2020 until December 2024. 
As of December 2024, there are 1800 unique entries available on the daily blog, displaying individual poems (often illustrated) and wordplay, but also with some photo-collages and parody song-lyrics. Most of their key elements are also presented here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections, such as this one. The "Daily" format also has the advantage of including some song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.




Monday, 5 June 2023

Grandpa Greg's Advanced Grammar: (re)DUPLICATIONS, part #1


CURRENT CONTENTS

Clap-trap
Cootchie-(cootchie-)coo
Dilly-dally
Fuddle-duddle
Fuddy-duddy
Hanky-panky
Harum-scarum
Helter-skelter
(for continuation, see the link below)


Authors' Note:  Reduplications as they are best known, sometimes also called duplications, are language forms (morphs), usually for nouns, in which an element of the word is repeated with little or no change; they figure prominently among the most musical elements in English and in other languages. To this author, the more commonly used term seems redundant. 

The disparaging term gobbledegook was first used in 1944 by a Texas politician named Maverick (scion of the original staunchly independent thinker). Its meaning — pompous, overinflated language — gave rise a few year later to the equivalent bafflegab. These expressions, employing repetition of sounds, have a musical and amusing quality, as do their venerable synonyms --hogwashpoppycockbalderdashbunkum and tommyrot, but only their close cousin claptrap (alternately clap-trap) -- would qualify as a reduplication.




Authors' NoteCootchie coo, sometimes cootchie cootchie coo, with its many spelling variants, has evolved as a (re)duplication voiced when tickling a baby, or possibly other targets, as described [[47817:here]]. Bloviation, and the blowhard are described in other verses.




Authors' Note: The essential appended line (L6) of this verse is acknowledged by the author to have a puzzling rhyming scheme, although the latter is partly offset by the action taking place near the palpitatingly iconic Palindrome Valley. Another redeeming feature is that, unlike the other half-dozen or so other poems on this topic at the collaborative online site OEDILF, it is gratifyingly concordant with the normal conversational stressing of DIL-ly-dal-ly on its first syllable.

Another view of wordplay competitions in Palindrome Valley can be found HERE.




Authors' Note: (usually, FUD-uhl-dud-uhl, or with a French lilt, as here, fud-uhl-DUD-uhl)

fuddle-duddle: 
an infrequently used (re)duplication, voiced dismissively in dealing with opinions that the speaker rejects.

In 1971 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, father of current PM Justin Trudeau, unleashed a minor scandal by using unparliamentary language in the Canadian House of Commons (parliament). A portion of the ensuing brouhaha, deftly sidestepped by Trudeau, revolved around whether he had actually spoken or merely mouthed the inappropriate words.

Web discussion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuddle_duddle



Authors' Note: 

(FUD-ee-dud-ee, or as a possibility here, fud-ee-DUD-ee). Another example of a (re)duplication.




Authors' Note: Reduplications as they are best known, sometimes also called duplications, are language forms (morphs), usually for nouns, in which an element of the word is repeated with little or no change; they figure prominently among the most musical elements in English and in other languages. To this author, the more commonly used term seems redundant. Many other examples begin with the letter 'h', e.g. harum-scarum, helter-skelter, higgeldy-piggeldyhillbilly, and hubba-hubba.








SONGS about REDUPLICATIONS!

The authors of the above poetic verses got so enthused about reduplications that they composed a series of patter-songs (in the style of Tom Lehr) dealing with this intriguing linguistic curiosity. If you follow along these links you can learn more grammar, and see dozens of surprising and enlightening examples of this phenomenon. Grab your ukulele, your guitar, or just your larynx, and enjoy singing along!
1)  Lyrics for Singable Satire: "A LESSON ABOUT REDUPLICATIONS


For more intriguing verses about "(re)DUPLICATIONS", please proceed to part #2 by clicking HERE. 


GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR WEB-EXPLORERS: 
To resume the sequence of daily titillations on our related blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings at the bottom of the page, and check the daily offerings for any month from the start of 2020 until December 2024. 
As of December 2024, there are 1800 unique entries available on the daily blog, displaying individual poems (often illustrated) and wordplay, but also with some photo-collages and parody song-lyrics. Most of their key elements are also presented here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections, such as this one. The "Daily" format also has the advantage of including some song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.