Lingo-ist-ics

Court in the act

A selection of quotes from the BBC Sport website shows that there was entertainment to be had even when the rain covers were on:

"A win's a win, unless it is not a win, and then it's not a win."

(Venus Williams to Sue Barker after her Wimbledon final win.)

"His problem is that he's got older, and that's true for most players."

(John McEnroe before Henman's match.)

My balls were just flying out and I didn't have any answers."

(Venus Williams)

"It's a 50-50 match, but slightly in Henman's favour."

(Andrew Castle on Henman's chances of beating Carlos Moya.)

"At the moment it's 30-all to Henman."

(Jonathan Overend on Tim's progress at Wimbledon.)

"The slippery conditions may favour Fish."

(John McEnroe's non-intended pun when commenting on the match between Rafael Nadal and Mardy Fish.)

"Becker had to play every day of the second week - eight days in a row."

(A comment from one of the BBC commentators talking about those eight-day weeks in the 80s.)

"Wimbledon is the world's most boring tournament. There is hardly anything to do apart from tennis."

(Tennis player Nikolay Davydenko.)

S’now joke

A snowclone, you ask? What’s that?

A snowclone takes an old idiom and places it into a new context thereby creating a kind of formula-based cliché. The original phrase will often be a recognisable, over-quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be ‘adapted’ into a multitude of variants for effect. A completely new idea can be expressed using the old universally recognised formula and succeed based on the audience’s familiarity with the original term.

You probably weren’t aware that this linguistic phenomenon had a name – and a rather bizarre one at that. It comes from the false premise that Eskimos have hundreds of words for "snow” and refers to a specific instance of usage: If the Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have M words for Y. In order to create a snowclone, X and Y should be replaced with new words or phrases.

Common snowclones are:

"X is the new Y"

You can take the X out of the Y, but you can't take the Y out of the X.

The X formerly known as Y.

X called. They want their Y back.

You had me at X. (Original X: "hello"; from the film Jerry Maguire )

No X Please: We're Y: (Original: "No Sex Please, We're British", a stage play & film)

X, we have a problem: (Original X: "Houston")

X has left the building. (Original X: "Elvis").

Have X, will Y.

When the going gets X, the X Y (Original X: "tough"/Original Y: "get going")

Try ‘building’ your own.