Verbing Kevin Bacon

From r2szoo2

Ambiguity Generators

I passed a van the other day with a custom paint job that advertised the name of a company - Budget Generators. My first thought upon seeing the van was that I would love to have someone generate a budget so my family could take a trip to a tropical island for spring break this year (This is the way my wordplay-loving, sarcastic mind operates).

Unfortunately, that is not the company's line of work.

Here is the information I found when I googled the name of the company:


Merchant Information
Generator Systems, Home, Installation, Natural Gas, Whole
Main Website,
Hours: 24/7
Payment: cash/check

The name of the company can be interpreted as (1) a noun phrase made up of an adjective plus a noun, or (2) a noun phrase consisting of a noun plus noun compound word.

(1)

(2)

It is the multiple meanings of the words "budget" and "generator" that lead to this ambiguity. From the thefreedictionary.com:

generator - a machine that converts mechanical energy into electricity to serve as a power source for other machines.

or

generator - someone who originates or causes or initiates something; "he was the generator of several complaints".

budget n. - allowance, means, funds, income, finances, resources, allocation

or

budget adj. - inexpensive, economy, bargain, sale, reduced, keen, reasonable, low-priced, low-cost, cut-price, economical, cheapo

What kind of budget generator would you prefer?

Adjective Verbing Nouns

from Toothpaste for Dinner

Adjective Noun Verbing Adverbially

I found this on StumbleUpon and I absolutely love it (but I would have used the word "adverbially").

A fun illustration and a great way to teach the parts of speech.

From ventrella.com

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - 50%Off Printers

Bananas and Rices

This probably isn't something many people think about on a regular basis, but when you do stop to think about it, it seems odd. Why is it one banana but not one rice? Why two bananas but not two rices? Both words, banana and rice, are nouns. So why do they behave differently? The answer is that they are different kinds of nouns. The word banana is a type of noun known as a count noun. One banana, two bananas, three bananas and so forth. The word rice is a type of noun known as a mass noun. Mass nouns cannot be counted and are only pluralized when referring to a particular type of that object, for example: The restaurant introduced some new wines. This is why mass nouns require an additional descriptive noun in order to talk about them in terms of quantity. Grain of rice, bottle of wine, piece of wood, and so on.