Zeugmawatch

A nice zeugma spotted in today's Guardian story about Ed Matts, the Dorset South Tory candidate who doctored photos of himself and Ann Widdecombe in his election literature (by the way, the actual story is not nearly as exciting as that description might lead you to believe):

"Dorset is fondly known as the 'Tory Bermuda Triangle' after Oliver Letwin vanished during the last campaign in the wake of revelations about Tory spending cuts. This time, the Tories could hide their candidate but not their embarrassment."

I'm not entirely sure when this became my pet form of speech, but zeugmaspotting is a relatively harmless pastime and I find it's much more pleasurable to happen upon them by chance than it is to actively seek them out. For anyone who hasn't yet felt the urge to open my explanatory link over there on the right, the definition of a zeugma is as follows:

"Zeugma is the use of a single word - usually a verb - to refer to two (or more) other words - usually nouns - when the first word is only literally suited to one of the other words. The meaning of zeugma has been broadened to include the use of one verb to refer to two or more nouns, where the meaning of the verb changes when used with the different nouns. Usually, the first use is figurative and the second use is literal."

Strictly speaking, it should be known as a 'syllepsis', but I think zeugma is much prettier. The classic example, as used in that last link, is "she went home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair", not a sentence I've often had cause to use myself but there you go.

If the zeugma is the most elegant of grammatical forms, then the French zeugma has got to be [insert couture fashion-themed cliché here]. There was much excitement in these parts when RickyB happened upon this page, which features what may be my all time favourite example of the form:

"il a posé une question et son chapeau"

The translation of which doesn't quite work in English: "He put [on] a question and his hat". (Annoyingly, in the search for that page, Google has just led me to a French blog entry about zeugmas. Can't I be original about anything?)

So, politics, English grammar and even a bit of French, all wrapped up in one handy, portable post. Job done.



(Just to bring this post full-circle, that Ed Matts story really was crying out for a bit more photoshopping.)