Language desk
< September 30	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	October 2 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 1

What do you call a kind of saying such as the one below?

What do you call the kind of humorous concise observation that something like "Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is being wise enough not to put it in a fruit salad" is a typical example of. It's not really a saying or a maxim or a proverb as it's not really traditional and hasn't been around for long enough, plus they come and go. You've got thousands of them these days but there doesn't seem to be a word that applies exactly. Basemetal 15:50, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would call it an aphorism. DuncanHill (talk) 16:09, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Duncan. Yes an aphorism. That certainly applies to this phrase. It was actually coined by Miles Kington. I didn't know that. The exact version being "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad". Does an aphorism have to have an author? Or can there be anonymous ones? I imagined there would be a more newer term, a little bit less learnèd, for those things (aphorism has been around for 2500 years), but I guess not, hunh? Basemetal 17:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Epigram is also an appropriate term for a humourous aphorism, incidentally. Tevildo (talk) 18:48, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole/Its body brevity, and wit its soul" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) --TammyMoet (talk) 08:59, 2 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is - does an epigram have to be in verse? The Classical examples all are, but this isn't true of Oscar Wilde's bons mots. Our article does not cite any references on this point. Tevildo (talk) 09:47, 2 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, an epigram does not have to rhyme. The OED says "1) An inscription, usually in verse = epigraph. 2) a. A short poem ending in a witty or ingenious turn of thought, to which the rest of the composition is intended to lead up. b. loosely used for a laudatory poem. 3) a. A pointed or antithetical saying. b. Epigrammatic expression" DuncanHill (talk) 21:31, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Another fruity story -

"Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana."

(I read that three times before I got the joke).

This is described as a "gag", said to be the wit of Groucho Marx but more likely from a 1966 Scientific American article by Harvard professor Anthony G Oettinger. This information is in a new book, Timekeepers by Simon Garfield (which mentions in passing that some of the months in the French Revolutionary calendar are named after fruit). Garfield's scholarship is doubtful - he claims the Gregorian reform of the calendar in 1582 "was resisted by the Church of Rome". The reviewer is not much better informed - he claims that Garfield's note that in 1715 "a total solar eclipse was observed in London on 22 April and in Catholic countries on 3 May" was "a rare slip on his part, as the Gregorian calendar was not adopted by Britain and her colonies until 1752". He also fails to spot that in declaring that Greece did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1926 Garfield confuses it with Turkey. 80.44.164.18 (talk) 19:01, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well I don't get it. What are time flies? Basemetal 19:32, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See here for the multiple definitions of "flies". Here are multiple definitions of the word "like." Come back if you have trouble finding two different ones of each that make the joke funny. --Jayron 32 19:54, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Jayron. I don't know if I should have added a smiley or if you should have added a one. Basemetal 20:14, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See Poe's law. --Jayron 32 20:35, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]