[HPFGU-OTChatter] Um...what's a Tom Swiftie?

[Doreen]

Subject line says it all...what are they, please?

A confuzzled Joanne.

A Tom Swiftie is a sentence created to be a play on words.

Jim Flanagan got all of us hooked on them with his letter:

Does anybody remember "Tom Swifties?"  These little one-liners were
popular, along with elephant jokes and Spoonerisms, back when I was
in junior high school. It shouldn't be necessary to explain how they
work -- just take a look at these examples from Harry Potter's
universe:

"I'm over here, Hermione, under the invisibility cloak," whispered
Harry, transparently.

"Meow!" said Cruikshanks, catagorically.

"Do you like my new dress robes?" asked Fleur, figuratively.

"You must put the lacewings in *before* the axolotl, Longbottom!"
Snape said explosively.

"Avada, uh... how does that go again?" said Goyle, cursorily.

"I've lost my finger!" cried Pettigrew, pointlessly. (with apologies
to Elizabeth Shaffer)

"Allow me to introduce myself; I am Madam Maxime," she said, broadly.

"Want to play a game of chess?" asked Ron, ponderously
("pawnderously").

"Welcome to the Knight Bus," said Stan, conductively.

"Oh, no!  I've forgotten my colour-coded revisions!" said Hermione,
listlessly.

"That @#$%! poltergeist!" Filch swore, peevishly.

"Mine was sixteen inches, solid oak," stated Hagrid, erectly.

"Someone's stolen all the games from the Common Room," cried Fred and
George, Cluelessly.

"You must breathe in the medicated vapours as deeply as possible,"
said Madam Pomfrey, inspirationally.

"Please concentrate all your attention on this pocket watch..."
Professor Trelawney intoned, hypnotically.

"Welcome to my humble stall," said Myrtle, commodiously.


Can you think of others?

-Jim Flanagan

And then, Morsus Crustum did a TS incorrectly, and the following precise
directive was sent in:

Ministry of Magic
             Bureau for the Defence of Magical Humour
                         3 March, 2001


Dear Ms. Crustum:

Thank you for you submission of 3 March.  However, The Department
must inform you that your "Tom Swiftie" was not written in proper
form. Please note that canonical "Swifties" *must* adhere to the
following formal structure:

"<statement>," <name> <said, asked, inquired, implored, etc.>,
<adverb>.

In your initial submission, '"The mirror in the Boy's dorm always
seems sad," Harry reflected.' lacked the obligatory adverb, and
should, accordingly, be rewritten thusly:

"The mirror in the Boy's dorm always seems sad," Harry said,
reflectively.

Failure to mend your ways in the very near future will result in
removal of the "W" key from your keyboard, and we all know how
traumatic *that* can be.

                             Yours Retentively, etc.

                             Anal P. Lardbhottom
                             Department of Canonical Swifties
There are lists of the Tom Swifties in the file section of OTChatter, under
Humor.
I have compiled a text file of all contributions. Jim Flanagan has been
converting them into html.

Now that you know more than you ever wanted to know about TS... how about a
contribution? :)

Doreen