It seems that the Feghoot is an eponym for Ferdinand Feghoot, a science fiction character invented in the mid-1950s by Reginald Bretnor under the gnome de plume Grendel Briarton. Feghoot went on short intergalactic missions for the Society for the Aesthetic Re-Arrangement of History, with each shaggy-dog tale ending in an outrageous, cliché-based pun. Time Magazine carried a great Feghoot headline in 1971, when China became a member of the U.N.: “China in the Bull Shop.”

While the Feghoot technically includes a very short story, we hereby declare that this species of punchline qualifies as a figure of speech under that name. You may find this hard to swallow; but Figaro is the bastard of his own ptomaine.

Sacha Baron Cohen, sadly, has been taken off the list after a skit he prepared with Ben Stiller spoofing Avatar was deemed too potentially hurtful to James Cameron’s feeling-weelings.

Dana Stevens in Slate

Reduplicative, the dilly-dallying figure.  Also prosopopoeia (pro so po PEE a), the figure of personification. From the Greek, meaning “to make a person.”

Poor widdle Jimmy. As every rhetorically minded 13-year-old knows, baby-talk mimicry works great for abusing someone, especially other 13-year-olds. One rarely sees the device used to discuss Oscar nominations.

Our quote’s baby talk takes the form of a reduplicative, which repeats a word with a different letter or two; e.g., flim-flam, hee-haw, uh-huh, shilly-shally, tick-tock, and the sweet Tic Tac. The reduplicative is not to be mistaken for the reduplicatio, a.k.a. anadiplosis. Someday Figaro is going to attempt to rename all these darn terms, most of which are Greek to him.

But the prosopopoeia, which addresses someone who’s absent, shall never be renamed, because it’s so impressive when one uses it in a sentence—which Figaro does as often as possible. (To a dog barking up the wrong tree: “No squirrel there, Sir; your utterances constitute a mere prosopopoeia.”) If we were going to rename the prosopopoeia, though (there, we used it again!), we would probably call it the avatar.

Praise the Lord 
and pass the ammunition. 

Chaplain Howell M. Forgy of the USS New Orleans

isocolon (i-so-COL-on), the figure of even clauses. From the Greek, meaning “equal member.” For another example, see this.

On December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Forgy walked along an ammunition line encouraging the sailors. He employed a beautifully rhythmic isocolon, a figure that balances a pair of clauses of similar sound and length. It works great in comparisons, contrasts, and paradoxes; in Forgy’s case it became the lyrics of a hit song.

You would think that Figaro would do this on Pearl Harbor Day. But today seems equally apt:

• We can now carry our guns onto Amtrak trains, thanks to a new law signed by President Obama.
• Last month, the Indiana legislature passed a disgruntled-workers’-rights bill allowing employees to keep guns in their vehicles on company property, even if the employer forbids it.
• In Virginia, legislators have reintroduced an NRA-backed proposal to allow students to carry guns on college campuses. Maybe the law can be enacted in time to commemorate the third year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre.
• Best of all, Virginians are celebrating passage in its General Assembly of a bill allowing citizens to carry concealed guns in bars. The new governor supports it, too.

Praise the Lord and pass the Jack Daniels!

They ‘potatoed’ him
into eternity. 

Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the new deficit panel, speaking of press attacks on Dan Quayle.

anthimeria (an thih MARE ee uh), the verbing figure.
From the Greek, meaning “one part for another.”

Figaro is definitely dating himself here. But, hey, we’re talking Alan Simpson, the 2,000-year-old former Wyoming senator and conservative funny man. The quote refers to George H.W. Bush’s hapless running mate in the 2000 election, who misspelled “potato” on a blackboard while talking up education to students.

The figure Simpson uses takes one part of speech and turns it into another. As strip Calvin said in the comic strip, “Verbing weirds language.” Verbing can also humorize language, as Simpson proves here. (Hard-core Figarists are welcome to point out that Simpson’s “potatoed” is also a rather starchy metonymy.)

We’re glad to see Simpson back in the political limelight. He’s the only hope for Obama’s toothless deficit panel. Simpson will not only give the panel some serious policy dentures; the straight-talking Republican is likely to shame the hacks in both parties and get the few remaining fair-minded Americans to understand the fix we’re in.

The national debt will grow six-fold in the decades to come if current fiscal policies remain in place. Obama’s so-called freeze on domestic spending won’t help. If we eliminated all non-defense discretionary spending—wiping out all anti-terrorism activities, airport security, border security, education, law enforcement, environmental protection, transportation, and so on—we still wouldn’t close the budget gap. Defense is off the table. Congress won’t do anything about the soaring health costs that are behind most of the growth in debt. How about raising taxes to Reagan-era levels? Forget about it. Result: bankruptcy within 15 years.

Simpson had better spell one heck of a potato.

For Obama, bipartisanship means good-faith outreach to the other party, a genuine consideration of their ideas, and incorporation of those ideas that both parties agree on. But the starting point is what Democrats want. Republicans’ definition of bipartisanship is starting at zero and building from there. In other words, the two parties begin on equal footing.

Christopher Beam in Slate

oxymoron (oxy-MOR-on), the contradiction in terms. From the Greek, meaning “sharp dullness.”

The ancients Greeks, those witty chaps, made their term for an oxymoron … an oxymoron! (By “sharp dullness” they meant “cleverly stupid,” not “old knife that can give you tetanus.”) 

“Bipartisanship” is sharply dull, all right. Let’s take it apart.

In a democracy, “partisanship means “along party lines.” As in, “I’m voting for this even though it doesn’t make any sense, simply because I’m a (circle one) [Democrat] [Republican].”

“Bi,” when not used by adolescent males, means “two.”

Put them together and the meaning becomes, “People who detest each other singing ‘Kumbaya’ for the cameras.” When people go beyond party lines and actually accomplish something—Figaro is old enough to remember when that actually happened in Washington—the effort is not bipartisan but nonpartisan.

Meaning: Abstinence from party. Not some bi fantasy.

No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

 reluctant conclusion, implying that you either used to believe the other side or tried hard to believe it.

The two guys who run the military for the commander in chief—Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mullen—have called for changing don’t ask don’t tell, the 17-year-old policy that allows gays to serve in the military so long as they don’t reveal their sexual preference. Some 13,500 gay and lesbian personnel have been discharged under the policy, including valuable Arabic translators.

Mullen’s testimony took the form of a reluctant conclusion, one of the most powerful argument techniques. It implies that, much as you’d like to agree with the opposition, facts or circumstances give you no choice. The reluctant conclusion contributes mightily to your eunoia, the audience’s belief in your objectivity. Imagine if Mullen had said, “Anyone with a brain and a heart should recognize that…” If you happen to disagree, then Mullen is accusing you of lacking a brain and a heart. Goodbye, civility. Instead, he said, “I cannot escape being troubled by the fact…”

The admiral’s testimony won’t get many conservatives behind a reversal, though. They have a good opposing argument: Don’t enforce a social change on a military that’s already under the stress of two wars. But then, conservatives had an even better argument when they opposed Harry Truman’s integration of the military during the Korean War, right after World War Two. Now, that was stressful. But Figaro can’t help but think that it was the American thing to do.

Do you want this book published
or just printed?

Angus Cameron, top editor at Little, Brown, to J.D. Salinger

reductio ad absurdum, “reduction to absurdity.” Also erotesis (eh-ro-TEE-sis), the rhetorical question.

 J.D. Salinger died Wednesday at age 91, almost six decades after his adolescent-angst novel, Catcher in the Rye, came out. Already something of a recluse, he said he didn’t want any publicity for the book; not even review copies.

Angus Cameron’s reply neatly reveals the difference between publishing a book and merely printing it. He deploys a reductio ad absurdum, an argument technique that boils the opponent’s argument down to its ludicrous core.

Salinger lived in extreme privacy in Cornish, New Hampshire, near Figaro’s neck of the woods. The townsfolk discouraged or even misled nosey types and journalists. Once, however, we were browsing in a local bookstore when an old man came in, bought a book, and quickly left. A friend of ours who lived in Cornish nodded toward the door and muttered, “That was J.D. Salinger.”

May he rest in the remotest part of heaven.

The dissent says that “ ‘speech’ ” refers to oral communications of human beings, and since corporations are not human beings they cannot speak. This is sophistry.

Justice Antony Scalia, footnote in a concurring opinion in Citizens United v. FEC

 synecdoche, the generalizing trope. From the Greek, meaning “swap.”

For the past century, federal law has prohibited corporations from using their own treasury to promote or trash a candidate. The Supremes yesterday upended Congress with a sweeping judgment: corporations have the same speech rights as people, and can spend their money on political speech without government interference.

Figaro is thrilled that one of the most important Supreme Court cases in a decade revolved around a synecdoche. This tricky trope takes a part or constituent of something and makes it stand for the whole. Or the reverse. “America won 15 golds in Canada” is a double synecdoche—“golds” stand for gold medals, and “America” stands for the athletes. Got it?

In the Supreme Court case, the question came down to whether a corporation—that potent mix of people and money—is, under the Constitution, a person. Their answer: yes. And so the synecdoche “I got screwed by my banker” takes on a richer, more literal meaning.

We urge you to buy protection.

Equal rights for Sarcasm –
Use the SarcMark.

Website for SarcMark

mycterismus (mik-ter-IS-mus), the sneer.  From the Greek, meaning “sneer.”

Questions get a mark, right? Even exclamations have a point! But poor sarcasm has gone unpunctuated—until now. A very earnest software developer offers a character that lets people know when you don’t mean what you say. For only $1.99, you can download the SarcMark (a symbol that, perhaps intentionally, seems to depict something being flushed down a toilet) and use it to end all your snarky sentences.

Personally, Figaro prefers his irony to remain ironic. Sarcasm marks have been absent from keyboards for a good reason. While an exclamation point amplifies a sentence, turning a holy cow into a HOLY COW!, a SarcMark undoes the sarcasm. The moment you say you’re being ironic, you aren’t.

On the other hand, unironic irony can become a form of irony, if it’s accompanied by an ironically ludicrous gesture. This is where the mycterismus comes in. A gesture or expression that shows contempt for the listener, it gets magnificent use in a Monty Python movie and in the routine that made Steve Martin famous: “Excuuuuuuuuusssssse meeeeeeeee.”

In other words, the SarcMark is a kind of emoticon. Most emoticons are free, and they’re absolutely worth the price. But while other emoticons show a smiley (or frowny) face, the SarcMark is more abstract. And abstract toilet art is worth a lot more than a smiley face.

NOT.

 O little town of Bethlehem                                                
How still we see thee lie

Christmas carol by Phillips Brooks

prosopopoeia (pro-so-po-PEE-a), the humanizer.

 Figaro’s favorite language sage, Brooks Clark, writes that the sweet little Christmas carol resulted from a bet made by a well-known preacher, Phillips Brooks:

“During the Christmas season of 1867, Brooks was looking for a special carol for the children of Philadelphia’s Holy Trinity Church to sing in their Christmas program, but he wasn’t satisfied with the choices available.  He bet his organist, Lewis R. Redner, that he could write a better one.  He retired to his study, where he wrote the words to O Little Town of Bethlehem in a single evening.”

The song talks to a city as if it were a person, employing the personification figure called prosopopoeia. Orators have been talking to inanimate objects or other species for millennia, with only a small percentage institutionalized for schizophrenia. The figure may seem strange today, but Figaro uses it often. For instance, he speaks colorfully to his computer whenever it freezes up.

Back to the Christmas carol: The organist, Lewis Redner, wrote the melody the night before the concert, when he woke up with the notes miraculously in his head. Brooks’s own inspiration came from Bethlehem itself. Two years before, while traveling to preach the midnight Christmas Eve service in the Church of the Nativity, Brooks stopped on a hillside overlooking the sleepy city while shepherds watched their flocks nearby.

What self-respecting preacher wouldn’t get a carol out of that?

Joy to all in the days to come, and let nothing you dismay.