With all the dozens and dozens of Word Wrap posts, I’m flabbergasted that we’ve never covered menu typos—something that seems like such an obvious topic for a site like this. Of course, the best menu typos can be found in Greece, where lamb is misspelled all over the country as lamp. If you’ve ever been, then you know it’s like striking gold: you get the best food in the world, and have the most fun ordering it.

Closer to home, there’s a Mexican joint near me that also has amazing food, and ordering it can be just as fun as in Greece. Check out the flyer I picked up last week during lunch:

1) Offer expire with out notice. (hilarious that there’s punctuation, given the sentence construction)
2) Chese Burger whit Fries (hey, at least the preposition is lower case)
3) Chicken or Steake Bolw
4) Include Small Coke (Okay! Thanks for the tip!)
5) “We Deliver” (So they don’t really deliver? They kind of deliver? Or they deliver in an ironic, unexpected way?)

What’s the best menu typo you’ve ever seen?

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Lately, I’ve had a few words/phrases on my mind that have multiple meanings, sometimes known as polysemes. It all started a couple months ago when I asked my friend about his wedding band. He thought I meant the ring, but actually I was referring to the evening’s entertainment. This got me thinking about other such phrases (each meaning has to be spelled identically to qualify, otherwise you probably have a homonym on your hands):

There’s mirror image, which could easily mean an image of a mirror in addition to the widely used phrase. Then there’s record breaker. If we’re talking about record albums that break records, say, on the Billboard charts, well then there’s another meaning in there. This one has a third meaning, too: In 1979 at Comiskey Park in Chicago, a rock radio station hosted Disco Demolition Night. Local rock fans were asked to bring disco records to the ballpark where they were literally smashed and burned.

Though perhaps a stretch, The Mole in that Austin Powers flick with the mole on his face might be considered the embodiment of a polyseme. What do you think? What are some other common phrases with multiple meanings?

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It’s been a while since I posted a Word Wrap. We’ve had so many talented guest wordies on the blog, I thought I wouldn’t crowd their space.

But it feels good to bring it back, especially with the below interview I recently did with author and translator, Stefano Bertoussi. Stefano lives in Milan and, as you’ll hear in the interview, has made a name for himself translating big American writers into Italian. Among others, Stefano has translated James Ellroy, Madison Smartt Bell, Cathleen Schine, John Connolly, Elliot Perlman, Carl Hiaasen, James Lee Burke, Nicholas Evans, and yours truly.

He’s also a fine writer and has published a couple novels of his own: Fuor d’acqua, (Head Above Water) and Il Solista (The Refrain Artist). On top of all that, he also helps run a brilliant Italian Web site with dozens upon dozens of interviews with leading novelists. Check out BooksWeb.tv and search for his recent interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon (even though it’s dubbed into Italian, you can listen in English). And if you’re interested in my book in Italian, with Stefano’s (so I hear) brilliant translation, you can read more about it here.

I caught up with Stefano while he was in Los Angeles recently attending Book Expo America.

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I happen to love the greeting yo. Not a fan of hello or howdy or hi there or how goes it, I’ll shout out a hey or a yo if given the choice any day of the week. Maybe it’s the casual sound of it that I like so much: Yo, what’s up? rolls of the tongue pretty easily for me. Or maybe it’s the two short letters Y-O. Whatever the reason, the word sits well with me.

Perhaps this is why I’ve been following the development of the pronoun yo with great interest. Popular with the YOungins down in Baltimore , in many schools it’s being used in place of he or she and is touted by some linguists as a new gender-neutral pronoun. Move over they/them, say yo to your new little cousin yo:

Yo was tuckin’ in his shirt!
Yo threw a thumbtack at me.
Yo been runnin’ the halls.
Yo put his foot up.
She ain’t really go with yo.
Yo is a clown.
Yo sucks at magic tricks.
Yo looks like a freak.
Yo is a straight clown.
Yo goin to put that chicken in his mouth.
Yo, looka that dude pants. Yo is a clown.

Now, if you’re thinking I’ve already given too much space to a trivial bit of slang, check this out: Yo has been the subject of a major paper written by Elaine M. Stotko, a linguistics expert at Johns Hopkins University (co-authored with Margaret Troyer, a Baltimore high school teacher) which, for a small fee, can be downloaded here.

I guess the question I’d like to put to all you loyal Wrappers is this: do we need a gender-neutral pronoun? Have we blurred gender roles in our society to the point where we might as well toss out the he/she pronouns altogether?

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I guess I’ve been a little obsessed with word puns here in the Wrap. We’ve covered punny names, punny store names, punny e-mail addresses, homophonic puns, Paging Doctor puns, and, of course, the hugely popular Tom Swifty puns.

mental_floss’s own Kara Kovalchik has a thing for puns, too, and after the success of our Tom Swifty contest, she suggested we run another punny contest, this time casting a wider net and opening it up to all and any word play.

So I present you with mental_floss’s Best Pun IN THE WORLD!! Competition.

Enter as often as you’d like, one entry per comment (n.b. we mean it!). We’ll narrow it down to 10 finalists and let you guys name the winners. Two runner-ups will receive bragging rights and one lucky pun-dit (or should that be, pun-wit?) will receive a tee from our store. So make sure you tell us what shirt you’re eyeing.

May the best pun win!

Everyone knows about Rolex knock-offs and Louis Vuitton imitations, but at least with those, the company doing the knocking-off goes to a lot of trouble to replicate the brand name, as well as the merchandise. Not so with these 12 hilarious imitations found recently while researching fake iPhones. Seeing as this is the Word Wrap, you’re input is valued, as always. Have you seen a whacky knock-off brand name not mentioned here?

1. Sony

2. PlayStation

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Generally, I’m not the sort of fella who a) cares who’s on a group e-mail list or b) has the kind of time on his hands to waste scanning the CC field. But I did recently, only because the e-mail I’m referring to came from an intellectual celebrity and, I hoped, might include a bunch of other e-mail addresses from similar lofty minds.

When I’ve received e-mails from important folk in the past, I’ve always been intrigued by their addresses. Like, if Einstein sent you an e-mail, wouldn’t you be dying to know what he picked as his address? EmC2@yahoo?

So this CC list turned out to be a disappointment and a large waste of time. However, there was one address on the list that was identical to a vanity license plate I once saw. (While I can’t give it away, it did contain the old gr8 in it.)

This got me thinking about some people’s cute e-mail addresses, and how, at least for some, choosing an address is sort of like naming a boat. For instance, my parents know a podiatrist who named his boat “Toe Me In.” I’m not sure what the foot doctor’s e-mail address is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were another ped-pun in it.
What about you all? What’s the punniest e-mail address you’ve seen or, maybe even own? (Whatever you do, please don’t supply the post-@ portion!)

Another question: We need a word for people who enjoy sifting through group e-mail lists to see who else is on the thing. Or maybe the verb to do so. Anyone care to coin one?

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In the 1929 Marx Brothers film, Cocoanuts, Groucho explains to Chico his plans to develop and auction some land in Florida. It’s one of their most memorable scenes, achieving immortality with the following dialogue:

Groucho: ‘’And here is the viaduct leading over to the mainland.'’

Chico: ‘’Why a duck? Why a no chicken?'’

All through the scene, Chico demands to know “Why a duck?” – his daffy take on the word viaduct.

Daffynitions are punny definitions and, like Tom Swifties, once you get going, they’re a hard habit to quit. Calvin and Hobbes fans might recall this daffynition for the word pronoun: “A noun that has lost its amateur status.” Other favorites of mine include indistinct: “Where a person puts the dirty dishes,” and parasites: “What you see from the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

I’m not sure we’re ready for the Best Daffynition in the world!! contest just yet, but have at it! Let’s see what you loyal Word Wrappers can come up with.

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[There’s still time to get the vote out!]

I’ve read through the nearly 200 Tom Swifties you all sent in for The Best Tom Swifty in the World!! competition. And let me tell you, VERY impressive. Honestly, some of the best Swifties I’ve ever seen! After the jump, you’ll find my list of finalists (reprinted anonymously).

Now it’s time for you all to vote. As with our caption contests, all you have to do is drop your ballot in the comments. (And remember, only one vote per person, please. Remember my post on stat counters tracking your
IP address? Don’t think we don’t know who the cheaters are…tsk tsk.)

“May the best Tom Swifty win!” exclaimed Victor triumphantly.

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It’s been about a year and a half since I’ve mentioned Tom Swifties in the Word Wrap, so I thought I’d return to them once again for this giveaway because, well, they’re just so endearing (and so much fun!).
As I’ve said before, Lorrie Moore introduced me to these extraordinary puns in her story “Community Life” (one of the many brilliant shorts in her collection Birds of America). Some of the characters in the story are librarians and pass their downtime at work thinking up Tom Swifties such as, “I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly” or “There’s never been an accident, she said recklessly.”
The term “Tom Swifty” was coined in the 1920s and comes from a series of adventure books about a boy named – surprise, surprise – Tom Swift, who regularly employed a qualifying adverb like quickly or jokingly when he spoke. The series was written by Victor Appleton, who you might think you’ve never read. But there you’d be wrong, as Appleton was a penname for Edward Stratemeyer, the creator of The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, and Nancy Drew.
But back to Tom Swifties: to create one, all you need do is make a pun out of your qualifying adverb, such as Lorrie Moore did in this example: “This hot dog’s awful, she said frankly.”

So go ahead, try one and drop it in the comments below. We’ll pick one as The Best Tom Swifty in the World!! and send the talented winner a t-shirt of his/her choice from our store. Enter as many times as you’d like, so long as each is in a separate comment. Tom Swifties are easy. And once you start, you’ll be hooked, he said, casting about for his rod and reel. Okay, so that wasn’t a true Tom Swifty as there was no adverb. So I’ll leave you to your weekend with this one then: “David! Cut it out already, his readers said sharply.”

Oh, and be sure to tell use which t-shirt you want just in case we pick your Swifty as The Best Tom Swifty in the World!!

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