...Kentuckians surely must have just as many for snow on your car. My favorite type is the snowdrift that buries the car when it is so cold that brushing all the snow away leaves the windows clear. One of my less favorite types is the one I had this morning: the frozen dew as a foil-thin layer of ice on all the windows. If you are not already late for work, you can sit in the car and just let the defrost take care of it. If you are in a hurry however and choose to scrape, it generates a fine spray of snow at your face and down your shirt, regardless of the direction of the scrape or your position relative to the car. I noticed that some of my fellow drivers chose a third option: believing that the ice was transparent enough to use as a window and leaving it there for the drive to work. (!)
The first line of this post is an example of one of my favorite linguistic devices: a
snowclone. It is a familiar phrase in which some words may be replaced to form a new similar phrase. The most general form can be written with
variables in place of what you can reasonably replace. A few examples:
- If the Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have M words for Y. (the snowclone after which they are named)
- Sometimes a X is just a X. (Did Freud actually ever say that about the cigar?)
- What happens in X stays in X. (Vegas? The Mile?)
- My degree in X is pending. (Mary uses this one and it always makes me laugh!)
I like keeping an eye out for these, and learn about new ones from the
Snowclones Database blog, which I watch with an RSS feed. Do let me know if you notice others!
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2 comments:
That's really interesting! I have never heard of snowclones, but now I will have to try and drop that phrase into daily speech so people think that I'm in the know.
Wasn't that Bill Clinton who said that about the cigar?
Love the snowclone concept. Thank you!
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