April 16, 2007

X's X


The latest issue of the Stanford Chaparral (the student humor magazine) -- vol. CVIII no. 3 -- has a piece (by Neil Mukhopadhyay) on page 11 entitled "Thing's Things", listing new instances of the X's X snowclone (taking off from man's man), which we seem not to have in our inventory here at Language Log Plaza.


From

A Man's Man uses his stubble to sand off difficult-to-open foodstuff jars.  A Man's Man settles minor arguments with a hammer.  He can build an internal combustion engine out of bacon that runs on gravy.

it goes on to Boss's Boss, Car's Car, Robot's Robot ("designed and built by superior robots"), Hot Sauce's Hot Sauce ("so spicy, it deafens babies when used near them"), Towel's Towel (touch it to your tongue and "you will instantly be dehydrated"), Needle's Needle, and Ice's Ice (which never melts).

The Chappie has a website, but it seems to be about a year behind, so you can't (yet) find the whole thing on-line.

zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu

Posted by Arnold Zwicky at April 16, 2007 01:40 PM