Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 November 20

= November 20 =

Two questions
Two questions: 1) Why do we say merCHandise but merCantile? 2) Why do we say entERPrise but entREPreneur? 94.66.58.46 (talk) 01:07, 20 November 2016 (UTC)


 * See what EO says about these four words: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 01:47, 20 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Also, concepts like Metathesis (linguistics) seem a bit relevant (especially on the second). -- Jayron 32 04:43, 20 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Latin ca- usually became cha- in French. There are other doublets where we have one word from Latin and another from French, eg castle vs chateau, cantor vs chant, capital vs chapter. For the second case, we're talking French for both words (the Latin form gave rise to interpret) but enterprise is from Old French before they settled down to entre-, while entrepreneur is a borrowing from Modern Frence. --ColinFine (talk) 14:26, 20 November 2016 (UTC)


 * “The French have no word for entrepreneur.” Alansplodge (talk) 15:12, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Not since English mugged French for it. —Tamfang (talk) 08:22, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Terminology
1. "When I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I told them 'a comedian', they laughed at me. Well, they're not laughing now!"

2. Printed sign in the window of a pharmacy: "We dispense with accuracy." Handwritten insertion: "do not" - which was then crossed out.

There is something that connects these two jokes, and I think it ought to have a linguistic term, but I can't put my finger on it. Any ideas? (Bonus points: who originally wrote each of them?) Carbon Caryatid (talk) 20:15, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * In a broad sense, they're both examples of puns, in that they rely on certain words being interpreted in more than one way. (I believe 1. is usually attributed to Bob Monkhouse). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 21:32, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As a matter of logic, the technical term is performative contradiction. However, in the context of a joke, irony is perhaps a more obvious word to use. Tevildo (talk) 22:01, 20 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The first one sounds like a cousin to a Yogiism. The second one is a play on words somewhat akin to the old "time flies like an arrow... fruit flies like a banana." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:36, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, the original sign is an example of amphiboly - the corrections make it ironic (not in the Morissette sense, of course). Tevildo (talk) 07:06, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks all. So I've learned a fancy word for syntactic ambiguity, for which I'm grateful, but it seems to me as if these two examples share something closer. I'm still not sure what, exactly. Perhaps it's to do with the negation? The first plays with what we might call situational negation ("You couldn't possibly choose comedy as a career; what a ridiculous idea"). Any more scholars of joke language care to have a parse? Carbon Caryatid (talk) 18:03, 21 November 2016 (UTC)