October 21, 2013

"Putting the scion in unconscionable."

Is there a name for that form of joke, where you perceive a word inside another word?

The particular observation in the post title was made by Meade, reading about the son of a widow who hoped for succession rights to a rent-stabilized apartment.

ADDED: TV Tropes has a page titled "You Put the X in XY," which includes examples that are mostly really dumb, like "You put the itch in bitch."

The Kindle search tool is good (too good) at exposing these words within words because its search tool won't let you restrict the search to an actual word. For example, you'll have a hell of a time looking for a word like "hat," which appears in every "what" and "that." But I've made some delightful discoveries by accident this way.

9 comments:

Ron said...

Is it a CON or are they ABLE to live on there?

Bob Ellison said...

There should be a word for that form of joke, but I don't know of one. Similarly, Meade said (you said) "Don't cry for me, Santiago", which is a similar form-- rattling out songs that have lyrics or rhythms close to what someone said. That's a disease, and I have it. Mostly Broadway tunes, alas. Related, perhaps, to the Cockney rhyming slang.

Jody said...

My favorite radio promo when I was a kid was "Putting the Lice in Alice in Chains"

chickelit said...

Not sure what kind of joke that is but I once tried to take the "rude" out of erudite: link

Ron said...

On Twitter Charisma Carpenter was discussing her son when I asked if her son said to her CHAR IS MA!

I got the Atomic Eyeroll!

eddie willers said...

My favorite is: "They put the fun in dysfunctional".

Croppy Boy said...

Scunthorpe

jaed said...

"Putting the 'Twit' in 'Twitter' since [year here]."

Although it's a lot easier to do these when the sub-word comes first in the super-word.

Anonymous said...

Isn't that an inside joke?