Grif.Net

Bob forwarded the story of a woman who visited a psychic of some local
repute.

In a dark and gloomy room, gazing at cards laid out before her, the reader
delivered the bad news.

“There is no easy way to say this so I’ll just be blunt. Prepare yourself to
be a widow. Your husband will die a violent and horrible death this year.”

Visibly shaken, the woman stared at the psychic’s lined face, then at the
single flickering candle, then down at her hands. She took a few deep
breaths to compose herself. She simply had to know.

She met the psychic’s gaze, steadied her voice, and asked,

“Will I get away with it?”

~~
Dr Bob Griffin, www.grif.net
“Jesus knows me, this I love”

Talking with a friend about the vagaries of English from yesterday’s odd
collection, I was reminded . . .

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in
pineapple.

English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France.

Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

Quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is
neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

Why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and
hammers don’t ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One
goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?

Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them,
what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by
truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a
wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house
can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out,
and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

~~
Dr Bob Griffin, www.grif.net
“Jesus knows me, this I love”

In rhetoric, antimetabole is the repetition of words in successive clauses,
but in transposed grammatical order (ex: “I know what I like, and like what
I know”). I find them intriguing and wonder if there are more that are YOUR
favorites?

From the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961 “…ask not
what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

From a speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower to the Republican National Committee
January 1958, “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the
fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

James Boswell on ‘The Life of Johnson’ wrote “This man I thought had been a
Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords.”

At the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon in November 1942, Winston Churchill said of
World War II, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the
end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Even Malcolm X stated in 1964 of the difference between black and white: “We
didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, the rock was landed on us.”

Dr. Seuss’ Horton remarked, “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.
An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent!”

From Ambrose Redmoon, “To be kissed by a fool is stupid; to be fooled by a
kiss is worse.”

In ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, Karl Marx wrote:
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the
contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”.

Line spoken by Mae West in ‘I’m No Angel’ (1933), “Well, it’s not the men in
your life that counts, it’s the life in your men.”

Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be
shed.”

From Croesus, 6th century BC, and still appropriate today: “In peace sons
bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons.”

And my favorite –

From the StarKist tuna advertisements of the 1980s, “Sorry, Charlie.
StarKist doesn’t want tunas with good taste – StarKist wants tunas that
taste good.”

~~
Dr Bob Griffin, www.grif.net
“Jesus knows me, this I love”