I am a wordsmith. I love my work. My most rewarding time is when I’m at the anvil, wielding my battered keyboard, sparks flying, as I pound a molten lump of an idea into the glowing words that sizzle when plunged into the tempering waters of my editorial bucket. In the end, I wonder where the words come from. As I read them aloud, I marvel at their sound, sometimes music. I am fortunate to have the path that I follow.
Occasionally, something comes along that delights a wordsmith’s heart, a playful example of the complexities of our language. This came from my friend Penny, who knows my love of English and the written word.
An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.
A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
A question mark walks into a bar?
A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
A synonym strolls into a tavern.
At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
A dyslexic walks into a bra.
A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget. A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.
Anonymous
Chiasmus
Definition “An inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases (as in Goldsmith’s to stop too fearful, and too faint to go)”
First used in 1871. Its pattern is A-B-B-A, to-too-too-to.
From Webster Merriam Dictionary