OK, what's with the size 10 thing?

[koganbot]

Good discussion of Rihanna over on Lex's lj; dull discussion of Rihanna over at ilX, though I like where some dude says, "the knowledge that Ester Dean wrote an Esmee Denters song is just extra insurance on the guarantee that I will never remember which is which."

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

seeing as I can't access that lj, did anyone suggest plausible answers to the size 10 thing

[koganbot]

No, they didn't. The World Wide Web will have to provide the answer.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

there's a slightly old-fashioned jokey phrase in english english -- possibly US english also? -- "putting your size tens in it" meaning "putting your foot in it in a clumsy and intrusive way", where the foot is not only declared large but also somehow a bit unwantedly and unwarrantedly authoritarian (back in the days when UK beat policemen were all six feet and over, it was assumed they all had size ten boots)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

That would make a kind of nearly-sense if I mentally squint but it would be so fucking weird if that was the origin of the lyric.

[koganbot]

Well, being a Briticism, it could well have made its way to Barbados (or even from Barbados). Still, why choose a metaphor so obscure?

In any event, apparently mean people on the Web do make fun of her feet.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

well it's possible it's still quite a common metaphor in barbados -- or indeed that it's an actual real different barbadian metaphor she hasn't realised is obscure elsewhere

[koganbot]

Unflattering distorting lens on camera:

[koganbot]

Unflattering distorting lens on camera:

[koganbot]

Not a part of U.S. English that I know of, unfortunately. Nor does "size ten" make it into Partridge 7th Edition.

not a metaphor...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

... so much as a full-on old school metalepsis!

ie "putting your foot in it" = metaphor, but with "size ten" as a metonymy for "(large) foot"

Re: not a metaphor...

[koganbot]

"Putting your foot in it" made it here, where it trudges heavily and dully from overuse, but with no interesting variations that I know of.

Re: not a metaphor...

[koganbot]

Oh, I'd say it's a metaphor (whereas "he size-tenned it" would be metaleptic, perhaps; I just looked-up "metalepsis" in Wikipedia, so I'm not adept at its use yet). In any event, "metaphor" has practically become a synecdoche for "figure of speech."

Re: not a metaphor...

[koganbot]

(And Wiki is saying that metonymy and synecdoche can be argued to be subspecies of metaphor anyway, which seems right to me.)

Re: not a metaphor...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

metalepsis i think when the figure is rendered (momentarily) unclear by reason of substitution of bits of tropes -- metaphor when it's clear?

it's true that metaphor used to be used more restrictively and has come to name the entire class...

Re: not a metaphor...

[koganbot]

The example of metalepsis in Wiki is "I've got to go catch the worm tomorrow," which I'd say is a metaphor (man as bird) that alludes to a maxim. A metaphor within a metalepsis! Why should lack of clarity deprive a figure of speech of its metaphoric status?

metalepsis feasts off dead and dying metaphor

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think what a probably have in a mind is a sort of half-formulated restriction on metaphor relating to intention or usage: as in "metaphor is a device which offers a poetic argument for linkage, for explanatory or intensificatory or idea-expanding purposes"; by contrast, metalepsis is more like a conversational game, closer to a kind of mini-riddle, to amuse or trip or generally play with the listener's head, but NOT expansively...

so it's not that there isn't an overlap, but that as you push towards the outer limits of metalepsis, where it's a kind of competitive badinage what works on quick-witted knowledge of extant figures and tropes and formulas, it takes you further away from that aspect of metaphor where you see "through" the figure to what's meant...

Re: metalepsis feasts off dead and dying metaphor

[koganbot]

Metalepsis is grebt!

Re: metalepsis feasts off dead and dying metaphor

[koganbot]

(When I was in high school I tried to institute the phrase "Let's make like bananas" as meaning "Let's leave." Derived from "Let's make like bananas, and split.")

[(Anonymous)]

Re:(When I was in high school I tried to institute the phrase "Let's make like bananas" as meaning "Let's leave." Derived from "Let's make like bananas, and split.")

AKinCLE sez: That's funny, when I said "Let's make like bananas" when I was in high school, I meant "Let's throw our peels on the ground and make a Keystone Kop slip and fall on his behind."

Bonus Richard Hell points for putting your entire post within parentheses...

By the way, it's Clu Gulager's birthday today (he played Emmett Ryker on "The Virginian.")