“If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.” Listeners share some of their favorite paraprosdokians. It’s not the first time Martha and Grant discussed paraprosdokians. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Listener Paraprosdokians”
Listener Paul Freeman sent us an email that has a collection of witty sayings that his friends have put together.
Some of these are paraprostokians. Do you remember talking about that?
I sure do. Those are phrases that sort of take a sharp right or a sharp left turn.
Yeah, a lot of times they make use of the fact that words in English have more than one meaning.
And so the first part of the phrase we’ll use meaning A, and the second part we’ll use meaning B, and the second it takes your brain to switch tracks, you laugh because it’s just kind of interesting.
Yeah, like, take my wife, please.
Yeah, exactly.
Two different meanings of take.
Or you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We know how that one goes.
Two different meanings of the word pick.
Well, this list has a bunch of those.
One of my favorites, if I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
It just takes you a second.
You’re like,
We’ll do a few more off this list in a little bit.
If there’s something witty or funny that you read or heard, send us an email, words@waywordradio.org,
Or call us on the phone, 877-929-9673.
