wellerism, facetious, on the rise, reconfigured. I promise I don’t mean this in a facetious way: Why did you write “Consider the Turkey”? It’s a small book.

I promise I don’t mean this in a facetious way: Why did you write “Consider the Turkey”? It’s a small book. There aren’t really new arguments in it. Could that time have been better spent doing something else? 

The Household, Reconfigured

Reviewed by GARRET KEIZER

Two books explore how multigenerational and one-person households are on the rise.

Word of the Day:

wellerism
(WEH-luh-ri-zuhm)

noun
An expression involving a familiar proverb or quotation and its facetious sequel. It usually comprises three parts: statement, speaker, situation.
Examples:
"Everyone to his own liking," the old woman said when she kissed her cow.
"We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.

Etymology
After Sam Weller and his father, characters known for such utterances in Charles Dickens's novel Pickwick Papers (1837).

Usage
"All of the Shavian proverbs and most of the wellerisms have been recorded in a literary context ... Anyhow, 'So far so good,' as the boy said when he had finished the first pot of his mother's jam." — W F H Nicolaisen; The Proverbial Bernard Shaw; Folklore (London, UK); 1998.
(© Wordsmith.org)

facetious[fa・ce・tious]

• 発音記号[fəsíːʃəs]
• 
  

[形]本気でない；こっけいな, おかしな, おどけた, 軽薄な.