Kevin Stilley

  • Home
  • Blog Posts
  • On the Air
  • Quotes
  • Site Archive

July 13, 2009 by kevinstilley

Pop Quiz

What common English verb becomes its own past tense by rearranging its letters?

(see the comment section below for the answer)

Filed Under: Pop Quiz Tagged With: grammar, Pop Quiz, Wordplay

July 10, 2009 by kevinstilley

Church Bloopers

You have probably seen the following list of Bloopers that actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services. I have seen them more than a few times myself. However, I get a kick out them every time I see them so I share them here and hope you get a few chuckles out of them.

————————-

The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.

————————–

The sermon this morning: ‘Jesus Walks on the Water.’
The sermon tonight:’Searching for Jesus.’

————————–

Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.

————————–

Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community.

————————–

Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say ‘Hell’ to someone who doesn’t care much about you.

————————–

Don’t let worry kill you off – let the Church help.

————————–

Miss Charlene Mason sang ‘I will not pass this way again,’ giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.

————————–

For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

————————–

Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
————————–

Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

————————–

A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.

————————–

At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What Is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice.

————————–

Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

————————–

Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

————————–

Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.

————————–

The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.

————————–

Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM – prayer and medication to follow.

————————–

The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

————————–

This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

————————–

Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. Is done.

————————–

The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.

————————–

Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.

————————-

The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

————————–

Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.

————————–

The Associate Minister unveiled the church’s new campaign slogan last Sunday:
‘I Upped My Pledge – Up Yours.’

__________

RELATED CONTENT

Bible Misprints

Anguished English

Attracted to Homophones

Filed Under: Blog, Humor, Wordplay Tagged With: Bloopers, Funny Mistakes, language, language games, Richard Lederer, Wordplay

April 13, 2009 by kevinstilley

Pop Quiz

There is a surprising English word that is nine letters long. Each time you remove a letter from it, it still remains an English word – from nine letters right down to a single letter. What is the original word, and what are the words that it becomes after removing one letter at a time?

(see the comment section below for the answer)

__________

Book Cover

__________

RELATED

  • Master List of Great Quotes
  • Trivia Compendium

Filed Under: Pop Quiz Tagged With: brainteaser, Pop Quiz, puzzle, riddle, Wordplay

January 11, 2009 by kevinstilley

Pop Quiz

There are three words in the English language with which no other words rhyme. Can you identify them?

Filed Under: Blog, Pop Quiz, Trivia, Wordplay Tagged With: poetry, puzzle, rhyme, riddle, Wordplay

November 1, 2008 by kevinstilley

Expletives, Euphemisms, Metaphors, & Idioms – – Trivia

The expletive, “Holy Toledo,” refers to Toledo, Spain , which became an outstanding Christian cultural center in 1085.

__________

Book Cover

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, euphemisms, expletives, idioms, metaphors, Trivia, vernacular, vulgarity, Wordplay

September 22, 2008 by kevinstilley

Oh, my…!

Achoooo…

Oh, my!

When I was a kid I always thought it was strange that anytime a baby would sneeze my mother would say “Oh, my! She would say this in a voice unique to her that expressed both reassurance and concern.

Now, with my fifth baby in the house I once again find myself using my mother’s expression “Oh, my!” any time the baby sneezes. I don’t say it volitionally, it just pops out before I can stop it.

This makes me wonder if the expression originated with my mother, or if perhaps she had heard it often from her own mother or father. How many generations might this go back?

I expect that someday when all of the kids are home for the holidays along with their own families, to be holding a grandchild who sneezes and for there to be a chorus of voices as each of my adult children say with me, “Oh, my!”

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, DNA, expression, Family, gezundheit, heridity, inheritance, sneeze, Wordplay

September 21, 2008 by kevinstilley

Word Trivia

What does a catoptrophic narcissist fear?

(see comments for answer)

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, Trivia, Wordplay

June 10, 2007 by kevinstilley

Redneck Medical Terms

Artery The study of paintings.
Bacteria Back door to cafeteria.
Barium What doctors do when patients die.
Benign What you be after you be eight.
Catscan Searching for Kitty.
Cauterize Made eye contact with her.
Cesarean Section A neighborhood in Rome.
Colic A sheep dog.
Coma A punctuation mark.
D&C Where Washington is.
Dilate To live long.
Enema Not a friend.
Fester Quicker than someone else.
Fibula A small lie.
Genital Non-Jewish person.
G.I.Series World Series of military baseball.
Hangnail What you hang your coat on.
Impotent Distinguished, well known.
Labor Pain Getting hurt at work.
Medical Staff A Doctor’s cane.
Morbid A higher offer than I bid.
Nitrates Cheaper than day rates.
Node I knew it.
Outpatient A person who has fainted.
Ovaries You get to try again.
Pap Smear A fatherhood test.
Pelvis Second cousin to Elvis.
Post Operative A letter carrier.
Recovery Room Place to do upholstery.
Rectum Pretty near killed him.
Secretion Hiding something.
Seizure Roman emperor.
Tablet A small table.
Terminal Illness Getting sick at the airport.
Tumor More than one.
Urine Opposite of you’re out.
Varicose Near by/close by.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, Humor, Medical, Wordplay

April 11, 2007 by kevinstilley

The turn of a sentence has decided the fate …

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) once said that, “The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship and, for aught we know, the fate of many a kingdom.”

The worst such occurrence of which I am aware happened near the end of WWII. Richard Lederer tells it much more concisely than I could so I share his account below:

Victory in Europe came on May 8, 1945, and Japanese resistance on the island of Okinawa ended seven weeks later. On July 26, 1945, Churchill, Truman, and Stalin issued the Potsdam Declaration: Japan had to surrender unconditionally or accept the consequences.

The Japanese cabinet seemed to favor a settlement but had to overcome two major obstacles to compliance–the tenacity of the Japanese generals and the pride of the citizens of Japan. Needing time, the Imperial Cabinet issued a statement explaining that they were giveing the peace offer mokusatsu.

Mokusatsu can mean either “We are considering it” or “We are ignoring it.” Most Japanese understood that the reply to the surrender ultimatum contained the first meaning, but there was one notable exception. The man who prepared the English language translation of the statement for the Domei news agency used “ignore” in the broadcast monitored by the English-speaking press. To lose face by retracting the news release was unthinkable to the proud Japanese. They let the statement stand.

Believing that their proposal had been ignored or rejected and unaware that the Japanese were still considering the ultimatum, the Allies proceeded to open the atomic age. On July 28, 1945, American newspapers printed stories reporting that the Japanese had ignored the peace offer, and on August 6 President Harry Truman ordered an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A new era in human history was irretrievably begun.

The destructive power of the bomb was an emblem of the destructive potential of language misused and misunderstood. The dead and missing from the bombing of Hiroshima numbered 92,000. Another 42,000 victims were claimed three days later by the blast at Nagasaki. Concurrently, Russia declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria.

In the twenty days that followed the confusion about mokusatsu more than 150,000 men, women, and children were lost. One word misinterpreted.

[Richard Lederer, The Miracle of Language. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1991. pages 82-83]

* * * * *

The following are links to my previous posts on translation misunderstandings:

Lost in Translation

Translate This

Jerusalem Is No More

Filed Under: Blog, Wordplay Tagged With: Translation, Wordplay

January 9, 2007 by kevinstilley

Anguished English, by Richard Lederer

Richard Lederer, Anguished English (NY: Dell Publishing, 1987), 177 pages.

Those of you who are logolepts will be familiar with verbivore Richard Lederer. He has been contributing to the addiction of wordaholics for decades. His name is familiar to many after having written more that 30 books about language, served as host of the radio program A Way With Words for nearly a decade, written a syndicated column Looking At Language that appears in numerous magazines and newspapers, — and all while teaching English and Media at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. In recent years, he has become known to millions more as the father of Howard and Annie.

I love Lederer’s books, and recently went to his book Anguished English to pull out “The World According to Student Bloopers” which I plan to use as an introduction to one of my lectures for a class I am teaching this Spring. I should have known that once I had the book in hand I would not be able to resist reading the whole thing once again (for about the bjillionth time).

Anguished English is appropriately subtitled, “An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language.” When Jacques Barzun has nightmares they must certainly be about the contents of this book. However, for those of us who aren’t quite as possessed obsessed passionate, this book is rolling-on-the-floor funny.

In addition to student bloopers, Lederer shares malapropisms, mixed metaphors, unusual translations, quips, mispellings, signs, and headlines that will have you pleading for mercy. But no mercy will be forthcoming, for like me, you will not be able to put this book down until you have finished it. And, even then you will not be able to escape it because you will find yourself reading portions to your family, congregation, students, and strangers that you meet on the street.

I recommend this book to EVERYBODY. Tolle Lege!

* * * * *

Below are some excerpts from the Student Bloopers portion of the book to whet your appetite.

— Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

— Having one wife is called monotony. When a man has more than one wife, he is a pigamist.

— Many an inmate in the house of correction (of composition) knows the one variously attributed to William Lyon Pehlps of Yale University, Tubby Rogers of M.I.T., and others, who allegedly found this sentence gleaming out of a student essay: “The girl tumbled down the stairs and lay prostitute at the bottom.” In the margin of the paper the professor commented: “My dear sir, you must learn to distinguish between a fallen woman and one who has merely slipped.”

— Heredity means that if your grandfather didn’t have any children, then your father probably wouldn’t have any, and neither would you, probably.

— Abstinence is a good thing if practiced in moderation.

— Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

— The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.

— To collect sulphur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube.

* * * * *

Want more? You can read Lederer’s collection of non sequiturs culled from actual insurance forms at Wes Kenney’s blog.

Or, check out these spelling mistakes.

Or, here for some interesting translations.

And here are some unique quotations.

* * * * *

Now, go buy the book. It is about the price of lunch but will give you a whole lot more enjoyment.

* * * * * * *

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Humor, Wordplay Tagged With: Anguished English, book, grammar, Humor, Spelling, Wordplay

Recent Blog Posts

  • Discussion Questions for “The Language of God”
  • Billy Graham knew where he was going
  • Interesting quotes from “The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln” by Stephen L. Carter
  • The Bible – select quotes
  • America’s Christian Heritage
  • Christian Involvement In Politics
  • Freedom – select quotes
  • Kevin Stilley on For Christ and Culture Radio
  • Early Western Civilization classroom resources
  • Early Western Civilization Final Exam

Currently Reading

Frankenstein

Twitter Feed

Tweets by @kevinstilley

Connect With Me On Twitter

Follow_me_on_Twitter

Connect With Me On Facebook

Receive My Monthly Newsletter


Copyright © 2023 · Executive Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in