Puns, Peeves, Metaphors, and Mondegreens: The Lighter Side of Language

Here are some of the odder topics covered over the past three years at About.com Grammar & Composition:

• The figurative wisdom of Springfield's resident rhetorician ("English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England!") in Homer Simpson's Figures of Speech


• A descent into "the bowels of the armpit of the cesspool of crime"--along with a host of other Mixed Metaphors


• A misplaced comma that cost one Canadian company $2.13 million (in Punctuation Matters)


• A translation of "Any jelly bean with a pole can cork a meatball out of hard cheese"--in The Language of Baseball


• A quick stop at Oui Oui Enterprises, a portable toilet rental service in Chicago, Illinois (one of 200 Store Name Puns)


• A young boy's memorable reinterpretation of the first line of the Australian national anthem: "Australians all are ostriches" (in Merriam-Webster Welcomes the Mondegreen)


• A sign that says, We are here to "repair" your phones--and other examples of abused quotation marks

Join us as we revisit these and other eccentric linguistic events that have left us smacking our foreheads in amazement, vexation, or unabashed delight. See the revised edition of The Lighter Side of Language at Grammar & Composition.

Image: Homer Simpson TM and © FOX and its related entities