Grammar Moses: It's not a pickup line, it's a paraprosdokian

If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?

My lede today is an example of a "paraprosdokian," a mouthful-and-a-half of a figure of speech in which the latter part of the sentence is unexpected or surprising and forces you to reinterpret the first part.

It was derived from two Greek words meaning "beyond" and "expectation."

Given that I'm writing this from my secure bunker, there is no opportunity for you to throw your drink in my face in response to my lede.

Not all paraprosdokians are bawdy, but for my money the best ones are.

What makes a paraprosdokian work is when the first part of the sentence is so prosaic, even cliché, that you automatically know what's coming next. And then - WHAM! - the unexpected second part turns it on its head.

I'm sure you've heard "Where there's a will, there's a way" a gazillion times.

But what about, "Where there's a will, I want to be in it."?

Rodney Dangerfield and Groucho Marx were big fans of paraprosdokians, whether they had heard the word or not.

"When I was born," Dangerfield would jape, "the doctor said to my father, 'I'm sorry, we did everything we could, but he still pulled through.'"

Here's another: "My uncle's dying wish was to have me sit in his lap; he was in the electric chair."

He had a million of 'em.

Paraprosdokians are the cornerstone of one-liner comedy.

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening," Marx said. "But this wasn't it."

And "I made a killing on Wall Street a few years ago; I shot my broker."

Zing!

After I thought I was done writing this column, reader Ron Coppel sent me a Facebook post he found that read: "I watched a documentary on marijuana last night. That's probably how I'll watch all documentaries from now on."

Rimshot!

My thanks to Constant Reader Cynthia Cwynar for recommending the topic.

Uncharted waters

Former colleague Colleen Thomas was the keeper of our style manual back in the day. That is to say she was the arbiter of whatever grammar and usage rules we'd come up with. She knows her stuff.

And she and I have been locked in a Vulcan mind meld for the past week, it would seem.

"With the virus crisis, we definitely are facing something new," she wrote. "But it's not 'unchartered' territory we are experiencing, as we sometimes hear and read. 'Uncharted' would be the correct description. Its definition means 'not mapped' or 'unexplored.'

"'Unchartered,' meaning 'not having a charter or written constitution,' is a barely used word in our modern lexicon (except when it's used wrongly!)"

I'd noticed this, too, and had already started writing about it for this column.

She cited a couple of examples:

The Hill published this headline: WHO chief warns that coronavirus is 'unchartered territory.'

From former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in an essay for Fox News: "We are all in unchartered territory."

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.