Welcome to the demi-entendre home page, brought to you by Dr. David A. Black and Professor Barbara Aronstein Black.
This page contains an explanation of the demi-entendre. You can also go straight to the demi-entendre collection
A demi-entendre is an expression, often nonsensical, composed from two familiar expressions:
It gave me pause.
It gave me food for thought.
It gave me pause for thought.
The true demi-entendre is not intentional; that is, one doesn't set out to create it, and if one does create it consciously, it doesn't count.
A couple of years ago, mother and son Black and Black started to notice what seemed to be a dramatic increase of demi-entendres in speech and writing. They began to collect examples of the demi-entendre, and have now decided to share their collection of these curious and amusing phrases through the Web.
Every demi-entendre has two parent expressions, of which the demi-entendre itself is a composite.
Things took a turn for the worse.
Things changed for the worse.
Things took a change for the worse.
Tomorrow will be less humid.
Tomorrow promises to be less humid.
Tomorrow will promise to be less humid.
This is something we share.
This is something we have in common.
This is something we share in common.
As these examples show, exactly what happens to the two original phrases, in the course of their merger into a demi-entendre, can vary.
As long as it's possible to identify two phrases or idiom which, though perhaps slightly transformed, are clearly behind the expression as it is actually spoken or written, the expression is a demi-entendre.
For your reading pleasure, we have assembled a collection of demi-entendres.
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Copyright © 2003, David A. Black