A pot calls a kettle black…
Dan Q: How was
your day?
Tony B: Been
running around like a headless chicken.
Dan Q: You mean a
chicken with his head cut off?
Tony B: Perhaps.
But that takes six words and headless chicken is two.
Dan Q: Two doesn’t
tell the whole story.
Tony B: But it
beats about the bush, it’s lexiphantic.
Dan Q: Excuse me,
lexiphantic isn’t a word…
Tony B: Consider
it to mean using six words when two will do.
Dan Q: Words like
“lexiphantic” are confusticating.
Tony B: You mean
“confusing.” We probably both need an editor to watch what we say.
_____________
Voice-over
Paraphrasing Polonius: “Since brevity is the soul of wit, I will
be brief: you beat about the bush, but let that go.”
Cooke then compared this with the King James version:
"And God said, Let
there be light: and there was light."
2 comments:
Isn't that a headless quail, Dan?
A most interesting posting! The tension between brevity and rhetorical richness. Even my engineering students come to appreciate the choice - the technical academic genre is coming to have some rhetorical dimension. Some!
best
Rolo
Wondering where this year's summer rolls and roils with Rolo? For some of us, we alternately shiver in the heat and simmer in the frosts as we switch hemispheres. Yes, the contrast between brevity and bombast, between crisp clarity and frizzy woolliness... Getting rhetoric right can be dementing. Prost!
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