Friday Follies 2
2 March, 2012
Morning and welcome to Friday Follies, Mark 2, with two new recipes on this week’s menu. The first is a Brainstorm-lite, all to do with dead donkeys and headless chooks – while the second is another beta-test: the Conundrum.
Not to be confused by the end-game conundrum on Letters and Numbers. (And if you haven’t twigged, get watching now, as we’re into the finals of Series 4, with some white-knuckle games in prospect.) No, this conundrum is a language poser, where the answer is most likely unique. More in a tick. But first the shallow end:
CRUEL PHRASES – rumours insist that RSPCA officers have been snooping around the dictionary, troubled by the rise of phrases inflicting harm and indignity onto God’s creatures. Duckshoving, say, is the malpractice among cabbies, jumping the line at a rank. While killing two birds with one stone is out-and-out felonious. What other fauna-flogging phrases can you add? Sadly, there must be dozens.
CONUNDRUM – phrases like leisure industry and working holiday are oxymorons, being adjacent opposites. Single-word oxymorons are tougher to find, like bittersweet or firewater, or even nook! Digging into a word’s roots, you’ll find preposterous is an oxymoron too, literally before/after, or back to front. I can think of another oxymoronic word, looking at its origins, that literally means have/have not – or possible give/take. What’s the word? (And can you add to our one-word oxymorons?)
"
Recent Comments