AC Capehart/Wordplay

Created Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:11:13 +0000 Modified Thu, 14 Oct 2021 14:31:47 +0000
384 Words

I enjoy puns, and wordplay, possibly to a fault. If I remember, I’ll post some shaggy dogs at some point.

I read somewhere earlier today about someone sidling up to a bar, and that made me think about the word sidle.  It’s one of those words I only know from context, and that context is alwasy sidling up to a bar.  I inferred that the definition was just “to approach”, but I looked it up today to learn that it means to approach or move sideways (or furtively).

That, in turn, made me think of words that I (and others) have learned either just by context, or in some other way don’t know the full definition.  For example, yesterday, I’ve have thought nothing of saying that I sidled up to an empty bar.  Now, that sounds a little silly.  I made a similar foot-in-mouth error when I talked about the duffers at Kesmai to a visiting VIP thinking I was talking about golfers.

I find those sorts of language-overreaching mistakes embarrassing to make, and embarrassing to catch in conversation, but I was thinking it might be fun to write a little prose that made extensive use of not-quite-right English.  In the meanwhile, enjoy one of my favorite childhood rhymes:

“One Fine Day…” rhyme.

One fine day in the middle of the night,

Two dead boys* got up to fight, [*or men]

Back to back they faced each other,

Drew their swords and shot each other,

One was blind and the other couldn’t, see

So they chose a dummy for a referee.

A blind man went to see fair play,

A dumb man went to shout “hooray!”

A paralysed donkey passing by,

Kicked the blind man in the eye,

Knocked him through a nine inch wall,

Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,

A deaf policeman heard the noise,

And came to arrest the two dead boys,

If you don’t believe this lie is true,

Ask the blind man he saw it too!