Talk:Tom Swifty

message: This page should be combined with the "Tom Swifty" page. The result should be checked against the "Tom Swift" page for accuracy.--Lavintzin 02:35, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: A user recently deleted these three entries:
*"Here I come!" he ejaculated
*"I always go last in the gang bang," Tom said forthcomingly.   
*"What do y'all do 'round here for sex?" Tom asked sheepishly.
I'm quite sure the user felt that they were offensive given their sexual nature. What is Wikipedia's official policy on this? Are these allowed to stay? I think they are very good examples of Tom Swifties - however, I am admittedly biased as I invented 2 of the 3 (forthcomingly and sheepishly).
:We're "not censored for minors", so you can probably add them back. 68.39.174.238 21:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The first  is really only dirty if you have your mind in the gutter in the first place, although it woldent make much sense as a Tom Swiftie if it wasnt in the gutter in the first place. Eds01 02:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The third is genuinely funny.Greg Locock (talk) 01:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Offensive? 

message: It seems to me it might be worthwhile listing proposed additional examples here on the talk page and get some votes or reactions before posting. I realize this may be seen as "un-Wiki" or something. But I find a bunch of the recent additions so-so at best, and yet hesitate to just delete them. There are hundreds more out there, and if we just list every one someone has thought of the article will be unwieldy. I'd rather we selected those we thought extra good (and discuss our criteria, including keeping things clean if that's a criterion.) Opinions/reactions?
Criteria I'd suggest:
:1. Funny: makes me laugh. (Surprising, clever, however you measure that sort of thing. Double or triple puns are better...)
:2. Illustrates a different type from others so far
--Lavintzin 23:54, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like that one. It is a double-pun. So it is doubly fun. Any thoughts on my two about under the section "Offensive"? Levine2112 00:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to prefer to avoid seamy jokes unless they're funny enough to warrant the offensiveness they bring. The "forthcoming" one is OK, but not great, for me. The other one I may not even be getting. Is the idea that the guys are humping sheep because otherwise sex is hard to come by? Or am I just missing something? (I'm not up on all the vocabulary of sex talk, I'm afraid.)
--Lavintzin 03:12, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I gave him a farmer's accent...to kind of drive the point home. You know those farmers and their sheep. ;-) Oh well. That's my humor for you. The "remorsefully" one is mine as well. Levine2112 03:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

text: "Remorsefully" I quite liked.--Lavintzin 04:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I think the first one would be better like this:  "This is a Swiftie," reflected Tom. 37.186.11.144 (talk) 09:11, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Submit here first? 

message: I'd like to speak up for the recently moved (demoted?) Swiftie:
"I didn't know I got airsick," said Tom, heaving it aloft.
DavidConrad thinks it is "lame"; I rank it near the top. Let me try to explain why.
It is an obvious pun, but pretty subtle in the way it works. All three words, "heaving", "it", and "aloft" are used in two senses. For both "heaving" and "aloft" (and arguably for "it" as well) these are related senses of a single word rather than two accidentally homophonous words. Getting related senses to pun takes more skill and is (to my mind) admirable in a quite different way than trading off a totally accidental similarity.
What I really like about this Swiftie is the way it puns on syntactic constructions. "Heave" can be transitive (involving a kind of pushing throw or pull of some heavy object) or intransitive (vomiting). "Verb it" is most naturally transitive, but there is a somewhat archaic or obsolescent construction "verb(ing) it (adverbially)" where the verb is usually intransitive, and "it" doesn't refer to a definite direct object but to the situation in general (or something of the sort). Examples would be "hoofing it along the trail", "running it close", "cutting it close", "tripping it lightly", and many others. The pun shifts the construction type to this one. And there are two kinds of verb-locative.adverb constructions, one where the locative is the final position of the direct object (where "it" winds up, possibly in this case in the overhead bin of the airplane), and one in which the locative describes where the whole action takes place (in this case, up in the air). The pun also forces a shift in this construction.
I find the whole delicate structure beautiful, as well as funny. I don't mind this being listed last, but I like it a whole lot better than many of the others.
btw, is posting your own Swifties "original research"? I haven't (I don't think? There's one I can't remember where I got it) put up any of my own. But it hasn't been particularly for that reason: I just don't think they're all that good. (I like some better than some that are on the page right now, though, fwiw.)
--Lavintzin 14:28, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Like a good many others, it would work much better in the right context. You'd have to have Tom boarding a plane with some kind of carrion, and then, once they were in the air, trying to shove it up into the overhead compartment or something.
--Lavintzin 04:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Whatever. Last was OK with me, just not out. Lavintzin 04:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heaving it aloft 

message: I just moved "heaving it aloft" up to the 4th spot, just ahead of "Otomi" which I think is even more contrived and unnatural.  (I'm pretty sure you'd have to mispronounce "Otomi" to make the pun work aloud, and I doubt many people would get it even then since they would have to have heard of Otomi (highly unlikely) and still recognize it when mispronounced (more unlikely still).  But perhaps you could promulgate a rule that the puns only have to work in writing, not verbally?  "No puns aloud.") --DavidConrad 10:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, you don't have to mispronounce Otomi: it is regularly pronounced (by English speakers) as [ˌotʰəˈmi]. (That's like owe-to-mee, with the strong accent on mee and the vowel of 'to' reduced to a schwa. The Spanish pronunciation is [otomí] and it is spelled with the accent.) And letting a language name bear the punnishment makes a different type of Swiftie than the others so far. I suppose we could use something like "Let's go faster," Tom said in Russian, to give an example of that same type, but I don't think it's as funny.--Lavintzin 04:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's even more contrived than "aloft", and sounds stilted even when you understand it.  I think it would work better with the language name used as an ethnic/nationality identifier before the name:  "Go faster," said Russian Tom.  In any case, I think Otomi is FAR too obscure a reference for general use; I'm a fairly well-read guy, and I'd never heard of them before. Mdotley 16:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Otomi 

message: Geoduck changed 
:"Let's go downstairs," said Tom to the robber condescendingly.
to
:"Take the prisoner downstairs," said Tom condescendingly.
and saw that as a "grammar tweak". I don't see this as a clear improvement. 
(1) "prisoner" for me doesn't evoke the "criminal" meaning of "con(vict)" as well as "robber" does. Perhaps I'm overly aware of people held prisoner, especially in adventure stories (?), who have done nothing wrong nor ever been convicted of a crime. (This is not a strong difference/argument, for me, however.) 
(2) In the older version Tom is construed as going downstairs with the robber, activating the other meaning of "con" ("together"). In the newer one, it would be Tom's addressee who would go down with the con, and the "together" meaning doesn't get activated particularly. Perhaps a compromise might be "I'll take the prisoner/robber downstairs," said Tom condescendingly.
I think I'd vote for keeping the older version. Any other opinions?
--Lavintzin 14:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  condescension 

message: "We'll have you looking like the Venus de Milo!" Tom said disarmingly.
Pretty good, but essentially the same joke as the defeatedly and offhandedly ones. Put it in?
--Lavintzin 23:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not one of your mightiest additions, but still a decent example. Levine2112 17:00, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yet Anothern 

message: "All my crustaceans have cancer, thanks to you," Tom said crabbily.
I know there's already one with 'crabbily', but this is better, I think.211.30.81.69 23:57, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New one 

message: No offense to anybody, but several recent additions strike me as inane, and I'd rather not include them. Acting as if "wondering" is a good pun for "de one ring" is bad enough; bales are likely to exist in connection with farms, but the balefully pun is weak, and single puns trading off insider names like Phoenix Wright or Will somebody are pretty pedestrian. This will be a better article if we limit the list to examples that are clever in new ways, make multiple puns, etc. Does anybody out there agree with me enough to strike some of these? --Lavintzin 04:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You know I do. Strike away! Levine2112 19:21, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delete some of these? 

message: This one occured to me this morning...
"I can't believe my invention got rejected," Tom said in patent denial.
What do you think? -- Levine2112 discuss 17:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:NOT for things you thought up this morning, either. (Try rec.humor! You'll like it, I promise!) But if you're looking for criticism: "Denial" isn't being used as part of a pun; you might as well say "'I can't believe my labyrinthine invention got rejected,'" Tom said in patent amazement" and get some mileage out of it. Or just add an "I" and step directly to "'Take your time, doc,' Tom said patiently", skipping the search for that troublesome noun altogether. --Quuxplusone 09:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you missed it. Tom's patent got denied; hence his invention got rejected. Get it? Thanks for the Google group suggestion! I'll look into it. However, I don't see any problem with sharing my own examples on the talk page here. Several of mine have actually made it onto article space and even off of Wikipedia! I'm flattered. -- Levine2112 discuss 18:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Another

message: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is fairly clear about lists of things like jokes. Including more than a small handful of examples crosses the line from clarification into becoming a repository. Deltabeignet (talk) 22:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm in sympathy with the desire not to have Wikipedia be a repository for everything possible. I do not think it necessary to apply that idea in as draconian a fashion as you want to do. I also see that having the list invites miscellaneous submissions. A fair bit of work was done to include in the list good examples of otherwise unexemplified types. The article as you are leaving it is less satisfactory for me as a user than it was before. I do not think your deletion was an improvement. --Lavintzin (talk) 18:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Tom Swifties 

message: Some old history of this page, which contains important content edits, can be found at Talk:Tom Swifty/History. Graham87 14:41, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: And I've history merged the two deleted edits that were formerly on this talk page. The diffs of the first four edits of this page may look a little strange as a result. Graham87 14:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old history of this page 

message: Does anyone have any idea how or when this phenomenon originated? I first heard them in 1962.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.13.189.102 (talk) 11:15, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins 

message: I think any modern copy of Boy's Life magazine, published by the Boy Scouts of America, would be a great source to cite for the examples themselves- they have tons of jokes, many of them Tom Swifties, in the "Think and Grin" section, which is usually on page 52.
Thanks! Your Pal, MooperVeltresleex 09:28, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good Source to Cite 

message: This is incorrect.  The original Tom Swift had 1920s type inventions like "Sky Trains", "Television Detectors", Airships and "Giant Searchlights".  It was his son in the follow-up series from the 1950s and 1960s who had the space age inventions and adventures. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.194.129.63 (talk) 11:20, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mischaracterization of the original Tom Swift books 

message: "I'm having an affair with my gamekeeper," said the lady, chattily. 92.9.184.163 (talk) 23:16, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: That's rather good. Greglocock (talk) 03:39, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  "For nonrhotic speakers," he answe'ed. Kdammers (talk) 18:39, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples