Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts

Saturday, October 3, 2009

You Gotta Love the English Language


Once again, I am blatantly stealing. I don't know where the credit for this should go. Otherwise, I would give credit where it is due.

I loved this and I hope you do too.

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France
(Surprise!).

Burn, turn, fern, learn, urn, stern, --- Why do we use the "e" the "u" or the "ea" for the same sound?

Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?

One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Park in the driveway or drive on the parkway? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down,

In which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes
off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the
creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.

That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick?"

Monday, May 25, 2009

Don't Look Ethel!

Appropriate is a lovely word. It rolls off the tongue easily. It sits nicely in the gut or the soul until someone or something nudges: "Made you look!"

Like the truth, appropriate is self defined. For all our sakes, I'll err with brevity.

I am truly bone tired of the following:

Doing a visual inspection of anyone's tattoos.

Diverting my eyes and struggling to understand a conversation because a tongue implement has now become a speech impediment.

Guessing the circumference of any upper thigh area that I should not have to see.

Wondering why anyone would be so disrespectful to wear that (fill in the blank) to church, a funeral, a job interview, a dinner party, or anywhere in public.

I am a great fan of, "To each his own." Do it, live it, celebrate it.


Everything has its place. You can have it. Please don't make me look at it.