Weekend Word Wrap: The Best Tom Swifty in the World!!

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!!

Check out all past Weekend Word Wraps>>