WAY FUИИY

My first thought upon seeing this plate from a distance was, "underway, cute and appropriate."
As I got closer, I noticed I had mixed up the order of the letters initially. When I realized what it was intended to say, I had a good laugh. However, it would be much more appropriate on the front of a vehicle, though the letters would have to be mirrored for the plate to be effective.

 UЯИᗡWAY 

I might have to have one of these made for my freeway drives to tell the drivers in the left lane who aren't passing that they are ИᗡWAY.

In a Symbol

Futility Closet is one of my regular reads and I especially enjoy the "In a Word" posts. Last week one of the featured words was pilcrow and it was accompanied by an image of the named symbol (¶) along with the definition.

pilcrow
n. the paragraph sign

I couldn't resist playing with the name of the post, the word, and the image.
Thus, In a Symbol, literally.

The Semiotics of Logos II - More Lookalikes

I happened to have seen these two logos within an hour or so of each other yesterday and I was struck by the similarity between them. While I had seen them both before and am familiar with them, I had never noticed how alike they are.

It reminded me of the similarities between the Obama and Pepsi logos which I previously wrote about in The Semiotics of Logos - Obama and Pepsi are Lookalikes.

Has anyone else ever noticed the resemblance?

It is interesting that for how alike they are, what they represent are quite different endeavors.

Though, I suppose if you get right down to it, they are both about exercising (albeit different parts of the body).

You can read more about semiotics here.

Wine, Texting and Acronyms

Does drinking wine turn texting abbreviations into acronyms?

This is what I saw as I turned the corner at the grocery store the other day - 

Even if I had been drinking, I am not sure I could have pronounced "GR8RW" as an acronym. Sure, "GR8" is a texting abbreviation (semiotics included) for "great" and "RW" is an initialization for "red wine", but an acronym these two do not make.

Of course I had to look up this new wine when I returned home. 

What I found left me even more confused (and I still hadn't had a drink).

From the ad copy: "...created without taking any shortcuts." "No abbreviations necessary."

More Semiotics of Engineering

For those that may have missed the comments on the recent post titled The Semiotics of Engineering, a reader shared a link that included the following image.

Can anyone guess which college's engineering program this represents? 

The Semiotics of Engineering

My son who is soon to be a high school senior purchased this shirt on a visit to the University of Michigan.

It is such a wonderful example of symbols representing letters (especially for engineers) that I couldn't resist posting a picture of the shirt under the category of semiotics.

Pedestrian Semiotics

To walk, or not to walk: the answer doesn't always look the same.

Here is a link to 23 additional images of pedestrian signals from around the world.

Via Neatorama

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Semiotics is the scientific study of signs and their linguistic meaning. It is about the relationship between a sign and what it represents. It is about how people determine the meaning of signs. A sign is considered anything (a symbol, an icon, a sound, a picture and so on) that stands for another thing.

Semiotics in the Comics

xkcd

Smoking Hot Phonemes /θænk ju:/

From a 22 Words post titled "Phonetically Accurate Gratitude"

“OK, so it’s actually not quite accurate since the T-H is voiced in “than” but not in “thank,” but close enough.”

I love that 22 Words noticed the voicing.

theta is voiceless

eth is voiced

To add further phonetic analysis, the way the sign is written the individual words would read as /ðæn/ and /kju:/
when in reality the expression of gratitude is a combination of the words
/θænk/ and /ju:/

Reversing Idioms

Love this t-shirt that my son brought home from camp this summer. It is a wonderful example of having fun with words, idioms and graphics. Unfortunately, the graphics illustrate the opposite of the idiom.

Demetri Martin, Linguist???

One of my sons recently purchased comedian Demetri Martin's book, "This is a Book". As I was flipping through it, I noticed that Demetri Martin appears to have a true appreciation for the many aspects of language and how they can be manipulated to humorous effects. Much of his humor involves morphology, syntax, semantics, semiotics, pragmatics and orthography.

Here are some examples from the book.

Pragmatics

Syntax

"Nearly 1/2 of all people in the United States are torsos."


Semantics

"The boomerang is Australia's chief export (and then import)."


Semiotics

Morphology

A Palindrome

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS YOUNG SON. THE MAN IS TRYING TO TEACH THE YOUNG BOY THE NAME OF A PIECE OF FRUIT AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SINGULAR AND PLURAL:

-Son, say a papaya.
-Papayas.
-No "s."

Orthography

Sparkler Semiotics - Canoeing

Happy 4th of July.

Viewing fireworks from the water is an enlightening experience.

Image from Epic Fireworks Blog

Sparkler Semiotics - Driving

Hope all that are traveling for the holiday week have a safe and enjoyable trip.


Image from Epic Fireworks Blog

Word Up Weekly - ♥s and ♠s

If ♥ is pronounced "heart", and defined as a transitive verb meaning "to love" (as mentioned in a previous post), then I guess it makes sense that ♠ would be pronounced "spade" and defined as ."to dig".




Image from 22 Words

Word Up Weekly - ♥

♥ According to a recent post on Johnson, The Economist's language blog, the Oxford English Dictionary recently added a new "sense" under the definition for the word "heart". ♥: pronounced "heart", and defined as a transitive verb meaning "to love". Hmmm...

Semiotics and Stale Bread

This falls under the following categories:

Where have I been all of my life?

And

You learn something new every day.

My son came home from school last week and asked me if I knew what the plastic tabs on loaves of bread meant. My response was, "yes, they are printed with the sell by dates." Little did I know they are color-coded by delivery date as well.

Snopes.com verified this newly-realized semiotic information for the plastic tabs and the twist ties.

According to Snopes, bread is delivered fresh five days a week to grocery stores: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has its own colored twist tie or plastic tab. This color-coding is alphabetical based on the first letter of the color which is coordinated with the order of the days of the week.

Monday - Blue

Tuesday - Green

Thursday - Red

Friday - White

Saturday - Yellow

The main purpose of the color-coding is to help grocery-stocking personnel switchover the bread inventory in a more expedient manner.

Now that I have this new information, I will never purchase a loaf of bread with a blue tab or tie on a Saturday.

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From a previous post: semiotics is the scientific study of signs and their linguistic meaning. It is about the relationship between a sign and what it represents. It is about how people determine the meaning of signs. In semiotics a sign is considered anything (a symbol, an icon, a sound, a picture and so on) that stands for another thing.

More on semiotics here.

Typeface Envy

I recently reconnected with a college friend who lives about an hour away. We decided to meet for lunch at a halfway point and she suggested a restaurant I had not heard about previously. As I walked up to the restaurant I saw this:

And I immediately thought this:

Interestingly, Bar Louie franchises are known for their martinis and they do not serve Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Mixed Messages - Semiotics and Text Message Initialisms Don't Mix

If you see someone

DROWNING

lol

CALL 911

If it weren't for the initialisms created through text message communication, this sign would not have appeared on Fail Blog.

In the old days, the image would have been interpreted semiotically as a swimmer's head and two arms waving for help, not as a comment that suggests people should "laugh out loud" at the sight of a drowning person.

The Semiotics of Automobiles

I recently ran across a post titled "I don't get it" on the blog Because I Amuse Myself. The reason I ended up at this particular blog post was that I passed a Nissan Cube with a windshield decal that read "The Brave Little Toaster". When I saw the car and its decal I couldn't help but laugh because the car does look rather boxy and I remember Disney's Brave Little Toaster from my children's toddler years. I always wondered if other people thought boxy cars resembled toasters. I got my answer after a few brief moments on the internet. Here is the post:

I don't get it




What's the appeal of the toaster-on-wheels vehicle?As if the Scion xB wasn't enough, now Nissan has joined the box-shaped car club with the not-so-cleverly-named "Cube".



Why? Who goes to a car dealership and thinks, "I want a car that looks like it could toast a giant slice of bread"?

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Here is a picture from The Brave Little Toaster:



I also discovered some bumper stickers for sale at various internet sites:

And then I passed a Ford Flex.

It even has a slot for regular slices of bread and a slot for an extra-wide slice of bread.

License Plate Semiotic Interjections

This is most likely not a customized/vanity plate as it follows the alphanumeric format of standard plates of this design in Michigan.

I spotted the plate while driving on I-75 last week and I would not have given it a second look if it wasn't for the fact that it was on a car of the same model as the one pictured below.

ICK A BUG!

What a semiotically perfect plate for a Volkswagen Beetle; I wonder if the owner of the car has noticed.

*I was unable to take a photo of the actual plate and car while I was driving. The plate is a re-creation and the photo is a stock photo.