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English grammar and communications hints and tips
Anecdotes for word-lovers
Much fun can be had with the English language, some of which is quite thought-provoking. One particular favourite of mine is:
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
This just shows how parts of speech can change, without much evidence of change in writing or sound to the listener:
| grammatical parts | grammatical term |
|---|---|
| Time | subject (the thing doing the action) |
| flies | verb (the action or thing being done) |
| like an arrow. | complement (additional elements) |
| Fruit flies | subject |
| like | verb |
| a banana. | complement |
If the second phrase were to retain the grammatical parts of the first, it would be most odd: fruit (it) flies like a banana.
| grammatical parts | grammatical term |
|---|---|
| Time | subject (the thing doing the action) |
| flies | verb (the action or thing being done) |
| like an arrow. | complement (additional elements) |
| Fruit | subject |
| flies | verb |
| like a banana. | complement |
This shows the difference between these two examples more clearly, with the changing subjects in bold italic and the verbs in italic.
In table 1 above:
Time [it] flies like an arrow. Fruit flies [they] like a banana.
In table 2 above:
Time [it] flies like an arrow. Fruit [it] flies like a banana.
Here is the full list for your amusement:
- Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
- What’s the definition of a will? It’s a dead giveaway.
- A backward poet writes inverse.
- In democracy, it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism, it’s your count that votes.
- She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
- A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
- If you don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.
- With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
- Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I’ll show you A-flat miner.
- When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
- The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
- A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
- You feel stuck with your debt, if you can’t budge it.
- Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
- He often broke into song, because he couldn’t find the key.
- Every calendar’s days are numbered.
- A lot of money is tainted. Taint yours and taint mine.
- A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
- He had a photographic memory which was just never developed.
- A plateau is a high form of flattery.
- The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
- Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
- When you’ve seen one shopping centre, you’ve seen a mall.
- Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.
- When an actress saw her first strands of grey hair, she thought she’d dye.
- Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
- Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.
- Acupuncture is a jab well done.
- Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.
Remember, whenever you have those niggling queries going around the office (like ‘where to put this apostrophe’, ‘do we use that or which; dispatch or despatch; complimentary or complementary; practise or practice’), do just simply drop us an e-mail or call.
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