Verbal Wit and Wisdom

And how Minnesota took a snowplow naming contest way beyond Plowy McPlowface*

Alert reader Dad (hi Dad!) texted me this week to tell me about a snowplow-naming contest in Minnesota.

This contest combines many of my favorite things:

1) Average people still getting to name heavy machinery even in the wake of Boaty McBoatface

2) Regional food (the excellent Blader Tot Hotdish reference)

3) Puns and wordplay

The first was covered ad nauseum at the time so I’m going to let you fine folks google if you don’t remember. And while I could devote a whole other newsletter to a discussion of regional food, this ain’t a food newsletter (sorry Dad, no vegetable puns here, too corny, bean there, done that, romaine calm).

So let’s talk puns and wordplay.

A pun is defined as a joke exploiting different possible meanings of a word or the different ways the same word or sounds can be interpreted.

The fancy term for a pun is paronomasia. It’s a Latin word derived from Greek. Para is a Greek prefix meaning “beside.” Onomazein is Greek for “to name.” (Another literary term, onomatopoeia, shares this etymology; it refers to a word whose sound is associated with its name.)

So, a pun is creating multiple meanings from a single word — names beside one another.

Wordplay is a broader term, encompassing the pun, relating to “verbal wit” per Merriam-Webster. Verbal wit! It’s such a great term. Wordplay refers to using words in a playful way, exploiting double meanings (including puns) and other similarities.

Most of the snowplow name winners are examples of wordplay, versus the more narrowly defined pun. In most cases, they’ve exchanged a snow-related word for one that rhymes with it (Yer a Blizzard, Harry, Sleetwood Mac, Blader Tot Hotdish) or taken a person’s or character’s name and made it snow-related (Clearopathtra, Blizzo, Han Snowlo, Better Call Salt, or the just-missed-out #9 finisher Taylor Drift). Scoop! There It Is takes a popular song whose first word was once the subject of a rap war and changes it to a neutral snowplow-related term.

The full list of names should keep you giggling until next week’s installment of The Standards Department.

*It should be noted that there is a snowplow in the MnDOT fleet named Plowy McPlowface, the top vote-getter of eight winners in 2020-21. I’m just gonna blame the pandemic.