second mentions
(“elegant variation," “false elegance,” “cheap ornament”)
Something in the nature of the human ear
makes repetition sound strange, or off,
a mistake;
it’s bad to say the same thing twice.
Make sure to have elaborate alternatives:
“the son of Peleus” for Achilles, or
the “man of pain” for Odysseus.
The Greeks had their own verb for this.
antonomazein, “to name differently,”
which lends its name to the rhetorical technique antonomasia.
The thesaurus has been cashing this check for centuries.
Adele, "the singer Adele,"
"the Tottenham soul-pop titan"
a fox who ran onto a soccer field,
“the four-legged interloper”
Grumpy Cat, the Internet meme,
“the sourpuss with the piercing look of contempt”
a swan that blocked a police car,
“the feathered obstacle”
a pair of armadillos who, for some reason, were put on a diet:
“The oval-shaped duo.”
charming, insane, perfect.
cheese, "the popular dairy product"
tea, "the bitter brown infusion”
bananas, “elongated yellow fruit”
milk, “the vitamin-laden liquid”
St. Patrick’s Day, “the annual tradition”
Microplastics, “the ubiquitous particles”
Will Smith, “the former Fresh Prince”
The moon, “the tide-changing rock.”
a sex doll, a “lust vessel”
electric scooters, “the long-necked, flat-bottomed machines”
You’ve got animal ones, and sport ones, food ones.
"Porcine," "bovine," "ovine," all those.
When animals are called, like, "porker.”
In Germany, a Wildschwein (boar) is a "Paarhufer" ("even-toed ungulate")
Milton:
Satan, “infernal Serpent,” “Apostate Angel,” “superiour Fiend”
Charlotte Brontë:
“His mother possessed a good development of benevolence,
but he owned a better and larger.”
Nabokov:
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning,
She was Lola in slacks.”
Boris Johnson:
“Hands up anybody who’s been to Peppa Pig World?
a pig that looks like a Picasso-like hair dryer.”
“Chutney Ivy in the city’s Cultural Quarter will also host
a samosa fundraiser
where guests can enjoy the triangular snacks.”
How does that not activate a kind of delight at the back of the cortex?
It’s the shape of the sentence,
the simple geometry,
the bathos,
the fact that,
not even halfway through the sentence,
however funny or extravagant the synonym will be,
you realize that you actually do need it.
edited from
The Twitter Account That Collects Awkward, Amusing Writing
by Naaman Zhou | The New Yorker, April 19, 2022
