When used intentionally a zeugma may be witty
and clever. When used unintentionally the reader may also fall out of her chair
laughing. But at the author, not at the story.
A zeugma joins two parts of a sentence
together with a single verb or noun that may only refer to one of them (that’s
an oops!) or may refer to both of them in a different way. (That’s when it may
be very clever, or then again it may still be an oops).
A famous example of a zeugma
from Star Trek: The Next Generation:
“You are free to execute your laws, and your citizens, as you see fit.” In this
sentence, the word “execute” applies to both laws and citizens, and as a
result, has a shocking effect.
“On his fishing trip, he caught three trout
and a cold.” (Wordoftheday.com)
“She looked at the object
with suspicion and a magnifying glass.” (Charles Dickens)
When Zeugma Goes Wrong
“Sitting by the fence, the dog barked at the cat” is an example of
when zeugma goes wrong. If you wrote that sentence, you may think that you are
making it clear that both the dog and the cat are sitting by the fence.
However, you have actually created a dangling modifier.
Due to the placement of the word “sitting,” it is unclear as to whether the
dog, the cat or both of the animals are sitting near the fence.
Another
example of such a construction is as follows: “Walking by the tree, the child
waved to her friend.” Again, who is walking by the tree? One child or both of
the children?
Helen Woodall
Helen is available to line edit and/ or content
edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.
2 comments:
Good to know our screw-ups have names...
Yeah. I find wordoftheday.com quite fascinating
Helen
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