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According to the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, the expression comes from the rare and obsolete French expression, which literally meant "double meaning" and was used in the senses of "double understanding" or "ambiguity" but acquired its current suggestive twist in English after being first used in 1673 by John Dryden.
A spoonerism is an occurrence of speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words of a phrase. [ 1][ a] These are named after the Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner, who reputedly did this. An example is saying "blushing crow" instead of "crushing blow", or "runny babbit ...
Loaded question. A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt ). [ 1] Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda. [ 2] The traditional example is the question "Have you ...
a. a city named Buffalo. This is used as a noun adjunct in the sentence; n. the noun buffalo, an animal, in the plural (equivalent to "buffaloes" or "buffalos"), in order to avoid articles. v. the verb "buffalo" meaning to outwit, confuse, deceive, intimidate, or baffle. The sentence is syntactically ambiguous; one possible parse (marking each ...
In rhetoric, zeugma ( / ˈzjuːɡmə / ⓘ; from the Ancient Greek ζεῦγμα, zeûgma, lit. "a yoking together" [ 1]) and syllepsis ( / sɪˈlɛpsɪs /; from the Ancient Greek σύλληψις, sullēpsis, lit. "a taking together" [ 2]) are figures of speech in which a single phrase or word joins different parts of a sentence. [ 3]
A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the ...
Look up conundrum in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Conundrum may refer to: A riddle, whose answer is or involves a pun or unexpected twist, in particular. Riddle joke, a riddle that constitutes a set-up to the humorous punch line of a joke. A logical postulation that evades resolution, an intricate and difficult problem.
Interpretation (logic) An interpretation is an assignment of meaning to the symbols of a formal language. Many formal languages used in mathematics, logic, and theoretical computer science are defined in solely syntactic terms, and as such do not have any meaning until they are given some interpretation. The general study of interpretations of ...