8 ms·

Also, the basis of a lot of humor is when the opposite of what you expect is what is intended.

• praptak 6y ago
  "When I take the shoe out of the fire, I’ll lay it on the anvil. When I nod my head, you hit it with the hammer." comes to mind
• twic 6y ago
  Samuel Delany thought this was part of science fiction too [0]: > There's often a literal side to SF language. There are many strings of words that can appear both in an SF text and in an ordinary text of naturalistic fiction. But when they appear in a naturalistic text we interpret them one way, and when they appear in an SF text we interpret them another. Let me illustrate this by some examples I've used many times before. The phrase "her world exploded" in a naturalistic text will be a metaphor for a female character's emotional state; but in an SF text, if you had the same words— "her world exploded"—you'd have to maintain the possibility that they meant: a planet belonging to a woman blew up. Similarly the phrase, "he turned on his left side." In a naturalistic text, it would most probably refer to a man's insomniac tossings. But in an SF text the phrase might easily mean a male reached down and flipped the switch activating his sinestral flank. Or even that he attacked his left side. Often what happens with specifically S F language is that the most literal meaning is valorized. [0] https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/delany52interview.htm https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/delany52interview.htm