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 ...

A sign in front of a restaurant reads: “Today’s special. So’s tomorrow.” Not the best way to tempt hungry passersby, but an excellent way to catch the attention of language buffs like Grammar Girl ...

Cracking e-mail from Ally (Duke) Milroy this week all to do with Paraprosdokian sentences. Yes, I wondered what the hell he was on about as well and the spell checker went into melt down! Apparently ...

Recently a colleague sent me an email which said "since you’re a lexiphile, you might like these phrases and use them in a future blog". He included a list of 10 punny sentences like this one: Police ...

Paraproswhat? Yep, you read that correctly. Paraprosdokians are linguistic brain scramblers in which the latter part of the sentence isn't what you expected based on the first part of the sentence, ...

Paraprosdokian (noun), a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase, or larger statement, is surprising or unexpected, in a way that prompts the reader or hearer to rethink the ...

2011 was a year I learned a new word. The word was “Paraprosdokian”. It is a 20th century neologism which comes from two Greek words: “para”, meaning “despite” and “prosdokian”, meaning “expectation”.

"Paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.

Someone sent me an email the other day with a saying at the end of it that seemed to be a paraprosdokian, but you never know, because the thing that makes a paraprosdokian is that it is not what it ...