I just love wordplay like this, and I had no idea there was a term for 'verbing' a noun :). Reading Tom's comment drew my attention to the difference created in word sounds and their effects when a reader has a different accent from the writer's. With the word 'petunias', I say pe-tyu-nias, (Yes, I'm Australian) so the 'too' in 'spittoon' isn't as exact a match as the 'tu' in petunias. It still worked, however, as I read it. I wanted so much to do this exercise, but I could only come up with something after writing myself into an idea via a longish paragraph - plus a title! So this is it, in full.(And, additionally, I do believe the previous exercises on long sentences are having an effect on my writing here.)
1959 - The Red Peril
I would hide whenever Dad’s friend Conrad called round. I’d been paying diligent attention to what they were telling us in school and at youth group meetings every Friday night in the church hall. They were everywhere, disguised as regular human beings, luring us, entrapping us, making out they were our friends only to skew our thinking so that we could no longer recognise our great and good and free and benevolent government for what it was, so that we saw it instead as insidious, corrupt, and we citizens as perpetually infantilised by our paternalistic overlords. No, I didn’t trust that Conrad, comrading his ideas at our house every weekend. Who would hold onto a name such as his without there being some hidden message in it?
Man, the sound of the word set 'peculiar spittooning sound' is amazing. It is almost, almost, better than the flower's name. I feel like calling them Spit flowers now. I especially like the way the set of sounds imitates the single word sound: double pe / cu like tu / pi like pe / tun like toon / ending s's. It feels like a synonym.
There is surprise in the use of spittoon but it is interesting to invert the sentence to create a different surprise: Until then, I’d never liked that peculiar spittooning sound, or the heavy stems, of their name: 'petunias'. LOL: Very contemptuous.
I just love wordplay like this, and I had no idea there was a term for 'verbing' a noun :). Reading Tom's comment drew my attention to the difference created in word sounds and their effects when a reader has a different accent from the writer's. With the word 'petunias', I say pe-tyu-nias, (Yes, I'm Australian) so the 'too' in 'spittoon' isn't as exact a match as the 'tu' in petunias. It still worked, however, as I read it. I wanted so much to do this exercise, but I could only come up with something after writing myself into an idea via a longish paragraph - plus a title! So this is it, in full.(And, additionally, I do believe the previous exercises on long sentences are having an effect on my writing here.)
1959 - The Red Peril
I would hide whenever Dad’s friend Conrad called round. I’d been paying diligent attention to what they were telling us in school and at youth group meetings every Friday night in the church hall. They were everywhere, disguised as regular human beings, luring us, entrapping us, making out they were our friends only to skew our thinking so that we could no longer recognise our great and good and free and benevolent government for what it was, so that we saw it instead as insidious, corrupt, and we citizens as perpetually infantilised by our paternalistic overlords. No, I didn’t trust that Conrad, comrading his ideas at our house every weekend. Who would hold onto a name such as his without there being some hidden message in it?
Man, the sound of the word set 'peculiar spittooning sound' is amazing. It is almost, almost, better than the flower's name. I feel like calling them Spit flowers now. I especially like the way the set of sounds imitates the single word sound: double pe / cu like tu / pi like pe / tun like toon / ending s's. It feels like a synonym.
There is surprise in the use of spittoon but it is interesting to invert the sentence to create a different surprise: Until then, I’d never liked that peculiar spittooning sound, or the heavy stems, of their name: 'petunias'. LOL: Very contemptuous.