The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catch phrases and sundry other textual allusions. It's especially rich in those meta-clichés that Glen Whitman dubbed snowclones. One that we've discussed previously is "I, for one, welcome our new __ overlords".
According to an apparently authoritative list, Homer Simpson uses the meta-cliché "mmm... ___" 97 times in 14 seasons, including 83 different values for the appreciated object. When I composed yesterday's post about the exam-eating dog, I started it with the title "K-9 Grading Corps", but it soon became obvious that it had to be called "Mmm, exams". A few seconds with google (unfortunately after I titled the post) taught me that the conventional spelling sets off mmm from the object of desire with three dots rather than a comma.
There's the usual spread of beliefs about how many m's to use. For the disjunction of "chocolate|beer|donuts" (the commonest authentic values), the counts are
| Spelling | Count |
| mm | 2,840 |
| mmm | 22,400 |
| mmmm | 21,500 |
| mmmmmm | 9,730 |
| mmmmmmm | 4,760 |
| mmmmmmmm | 686 |
A histogram of the names of the authentically homeric objects of desire (according to D'oheth's transcription) is given below:
4 chocolate
4 beer
3 donuts
2 forbidden donut
2 sprinkles
2 sacrilicious
2 snouts
2 free goo
2 invisible cola
1 organised crime
1 fish
1 Marge
1 fifty-dollar pretzel
1 loganberry
1 slanty
1 re-circulated air
1 purple
1 turbulent
1 beer nuts
1 money
1 ham
1 barbecue
1 me
1 sugar walls
1 double glaze
1 trophy
1 farfetched
1 hog fat
1 grapefruit
1 something
1 Gummi Beers
1 delicious
1 nuts
1 crumbled-up cookie things
1 candy
1 double chocolate (gasp) New flavor, triple chocolate!
1 fattening
1 ovulicious
1 pistol whip
1 memo
1 pie pants
1 business deal
1 hamburger
1 free wig
1 mediciney
1 caramel
1 maca-ma-damia nuts
1 pie
1 unexplained bacon
1 horse doovers
1 strained peas
1 incapacitating
1 urinal fresh
1 open-faced club sandwich
1 shrimp
1 bad eggs
1 spaghetti
1 donuts
1 salty
1 various eggs
1 Danish
1 split peas with ham
1 elephant fresh
1 pancakes
1 chicken
1 steamed gentile
1 64 slices of American cheese
1 foot long chili dog
1 hug
1 hippo
1 McNuggets
1 potato chips
1 unprocessed fishsticks
1 convenient
1 pointy
1 bowling fresh
1 cupcakes
1 marshmallows
1 apple
1 the Land of Chocolate
1 feed
1 burger
1 Soylent Green
There are many common non-authentic values: "mmm... coffee" with 865 hits, "mmm... scotch" with 224, "mmm... licorice" with 124, "mmm... bourbon" with 107.
And even "mmm... linguistics" with 23. A new slogan: "Linguistics: almost 1/4 as popular as bourbon". As if, alas.
Posted by Mark Liberman at January 7, 2005 08:12 AM