Thursday, April 06, 2006

Snowclones

I was just reading a post from the Free Range Librarian blog (my favorite) where she mentions snowclones. I thought, "What is a snowclone?" I tried getting a definition from Google (define:snowclone), and got nothing. Then I checked Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone), and found just what I needed: "Snowclone is a neologism used to describe a type of formula-based cliché which uses an old idiom in a new context....The term is an allusion to one particular instance of the phenomenon:
If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z."

Wikipedia has its place!
Tina Lau, North County Librarian
(in Fun)

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