Talk:Cretic/Archive 1

Get a new example
See'ya later, alligator/After'while crocodile is entirely trochees by any reasonable measure. Even if you change "later" to "lat'r" and English speaker hears two syllables, the first stressed. And the long "i" in "while" and "crocodile" is a diphthong, with the beginning stressed, except perhaps in a minority of accents.


 * The example is from the reference, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Prosody is such that staring too long can make anything anything.  Geogre 02:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Words are such that saying them again and again transforms them into meaningless gobs. Still, I stand by my meaningless gobs. Even reference writers o'erstrain themselves sometimes.


 * You're right, of course. When I was typing it, I had a puzzled look.  When I read it, I had an arched eyebrow.  I typed it anyway, figuring that it couldn't be more wrong than the many scansions I've seen of Gerrard Manly Hopkins.  The Shakespeare works.  I don't really want to lose the example entirely, because then the claim stands without proof, so I'll try to think (in spare time, of course) of a cretic in pop culture.  Geogre 11:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * A much easier task is thinking of cretins in pop culture. Funny how that one letter can make such a difference.


 * I think we have a category category:Cretans in pop music, so perhaps category:Chitins in pop music is possible, and then we can phenomenologically surround the cretins in pop music and therefore corral the cretics at the same time. Perhaps the "Oleo" ads from the 50's were cretics?  Geogre 14:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Another bad example
The example “attributed to Shakespeare” (“Shall I die? Shall I fly?”) sounds anapestic to me. No? Dodiad (talk) 09:59, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

outworn catch phrase
In times of war, nation building and in which international behavioral modification policy is being developed/evangelized, we frequently hear this old excerpt from a Lyndon Johnson quote... "Hearts and minds." I find it incredibly annoying... but effective. Cretic sticks in ones mind... and sells! "Shock and awe." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.249.18 (talk) 17:10, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Get a new example revisited
I have always heard the response as "in a while, crocodile", which scans properly. I don't know if that version is in a citable reference, however. Another example is the catch phrase "so it goes" as used in (forgotten which of) Kurt Vonnegut's novels. I'm new, so just a comment for now--i'll BE BOLDer LATer.Afragola (talk) 02:42, 20 July 2011 (UTC)