Word for a trick parallelism?

December 29, 2020 10:12 PM

Friend just showed me a humorous headline: ”Padres Give Up Prospects for Yu Darvish While Cubs Give Up.” I seem to recall there’s a term (possibly a very new one, invented in the internet age) for this kind of silly parallelism, where the same word is used twice but it means something different the second time. What is it?

I could only come up with “snowclone” and “eggcorn,” but those don’t seem to be it.

posted by stoneandstar to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

Best answer: Zeugma.
posted by praemunire at 10:16 PM on December 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Woo! Thanks! If I were cleverer I’d respond with one, but...
posted by stoneandstar at 10:17 PM on December 29, 2020

Best answer: This seems to be called antanaclasis. The classic joke with this structure is, "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:18 PM on December 29, 2020 [10 favorites]

Best answer: (Yeah, my apologies, I didn't read the question carefully enough; a zeugma occurs once but acts twice (or more). But it's in the vicinity.)
posted by praemunire at 10:21 PM on December 29, 2020

Response by poster: Both helpful! Thank you very much!
posted by stoneandstar at 1:28 PM on December 30, 2020

Aristophanes' comedies are full of these, the fancy term I learned was paraprosdokian. "Outside of a dog, books are a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." Wocka wocka wocka!
posted by athirstforsalt at 8:51 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Sounds like you have answers that satisfy you, and it's not quite the same thing, but your mention of "eggcorn" and "snowclone" made me think of "crash blossom", a headline-related term that I also learned (like those two) from Language Log.
posted by oakroom at 7:36 AM on December 31, 2020 [2 favorites]