Mr. Praline (Cleese) enters the pet shop to register a complaint about the dead Norwegian Blue parrot (parrots are not endemic to Norway) just as the shopkeeper (Palin) is preparing to close the establishment for lunch. Despite being told that the bird is deceased and that it had been nailed to its perch, the proprietor insists that it is "pining for the fjords" or simply "stunned".[5]

As the exasperated Praline attempts to wake up the parrot, the shopkeeper tries to make the bird move by hitting the cage, and Praline erupts into a rage after banging "Polly Parrot" on the counter. After listing several euphemisms for death ("is no more", "has ceased to be", "bereft of life, it rests in peace", and "this is an ex-parrot") he is told to go to the pet shop run by the shopkeeper's brother in Bolton for a refund. That proves difficult, however, as the proprietor of that store (who is really the shopkeeper, save for a fake moustache) claims this is Ipswich, whereas the railway station attendant (Terry Jones) claims he is actually in Bolton after all.[5]

Confronting the shopkeeper's "brother" for lying, the shopkeeper claims he was playing a prank on Praline by sending him to Ipswich, which was a palindrome for Bolton; Praline points out that the shopkeeper was wrong because a palindrome for Bolton would have been "Notlob".

Just as Praline has decided that "this is getting too silly", Graham Chapman's no-nonsense Colonel bursts in and orders the sketch stopped.[5]

>>3643572

divide by zero

In the 1971 film And Now For Something Completely Different, the sketch ends with the shopkeeper explaining that he always wanted to be a lumberjack and, ignoring Mr Praline's protests of that being irrelevant, subsequently begins singing "The Lumberjack Song".

The Monty Python Live at Drury Lane album features a live version of the sketch, which is slightly different from the TV version. Praline's rant about the deceased parrot includes "He fucking snuffed it!" Also, the sketch ends with the shopkeeper saying that he has a slug that does talk. Cleese, after a brief pause, says, "Right, I'll have that one, then!" According to Michael Palin's published diary, Palin changed his response in order to throw Cleese off. During this performance something occurs on stage that does not translate into audio, but causes the audience to break into hysterics upon Cleese's follow-up line "Now that's what I call a dead parrot".

The 1976 Monty Python Live at City Center performance ended with the slug lines, followed by:

Shopkeeper: (long, long pause) … Do you want to come back to my place?

Mr Praline: I thought you'd never ask.

On the Rhino Records' compilation Dead Parrot Society, a live performance from The Secret Policeman's Ball in 1976 has Palin cracking up while Cleese declares "Pining for the fjords? What kind of talk is that?" The audience cheers this bit of breaking character, but Palin quickly composes himself and Cleese declares "Now, look! This is nothing to laugh at!" before proceeding with the sketch. This version is included in the book and CD set The Best British Stand-Up and Comedy Routines, along with a transcript of the sketch and the Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

In his appearance on The Muppet Show, Cleese appears as a pirate attempting to take over a spaceship during a "Pigs In Space" sketch. At the end of the sketch, he demands of the smart-mouthed talking parrot on his shoulder, "Do you want to be an ex-parrot?"

In 1989's The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball, a benefit for Amnesty International, the sketch opens similarly, but ends very differently:

Mr Praline: It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.

Shopkeeper: So it is. 'Ere's your money back and a couple of holiday vouchers.

(audience goes wild)

Mr Praline: (looks completely flabbergasted) Well, you can't say Thatcher hasn't changed some things.

In a 1997 Saturday Night Live performance of the sketch, Cleese added a line to the rant: "Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians!" In an interview on NPR's Fresh Air, Palin attributed an almost dead audience to his seeing guests reverently mouthing the words of the sketch, rather than laughing at it. To end the sketch, Palin asked Cleese, "Do you want to come back to my place?" to which Cleese said, "I thought you'd never ask!"

In his published diary, Michael Palin recalls that during the filming of Monty Python's Life of Brian in Tunisia, Spike Milligan (who happened to be there on holiday) regaled the Pythons with his own version of the Dead Parrot sketch, but changed "Norwegian Blue" to "Arctic Grey".

In a 2002 interview with Michael Parkinson, John Cleese said that when he and Palin were performing the sketch on Drury Lane, Palin made him laugh by saying, when asked if his slug could talk, "It mutters a bit" instead of "Not really." When Cleese eventually stopped laughing, he couldn't remember where they were in the sketch. He turned to the audience and asked them what the next line was, and people shouted it at him, causing him to wonder, "What is the point of this?" He also says that when he and Palin were asked to do the sketch for Saturday Night Live they sat down together to try to remember the lines, and when they got stuck they considered just going out and stopping somebody on the street to ask how it went, since everybody seemed to have it memorised.

Margaret Thatcher famously used the sketch in a speech at the Conservative Party Conference in 1990, referring to the Liberal Democrats and their symbol being a dove, before ending the speech by commenting, "And now for something completely different."[6]

>>3643636

In 1998, The Sun ran the front-page headline "This party is no more…it has ceased to be…this is an EX-party" for an article about a Conservative Party conference.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone made a South Park version of the sketch depicting Cartman angrily returning a dead Kenny to Kyle's shop. Most of the lines are the same in the original sketch. It ends when Terry Gilliam's animations play around with Cartman and everything is crushed by the giant foot.

Cleese and Palin acted out the sketch during the Python's reunion in The O2 in July 2014, Monty Python Live (Mostly). The sketch ended with the shopkeeper saying he has a selection of cheeses, transitioning into the Cheese Shop Sketch. The entire sketch ended like the City Centre performance, with the shopkeeper offering Mr Praline to come back to his place, and Mr Praline replying "I thought you'd never ask." In their final performance on 20 July (which was broadcast live to many theatres all over the world), whilst listing the metaphors for the parrot's death, Cleese added the line "it had expired and gone to meet Dr. Chapman" after which both Cleese and Palin did a thumbs-up to the sky.

In the episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 13 November 2015, John Cleese is a guest on the show. At the end of the big furry hat segment (where Colbert and in this specific instance Cleese, create nonsensical rules), Cleese says, "Do you want to come back to my place?" and Stephen answers, "I thought you'd never ask."[7]

>>3643575

A joke dated c. AD 400, recently translated from Greek, shows similarities to the Parrot sketch. It was written by Hierocles and Philagrius and was included in a compilation of 265 jokes titled Philogelos: The Laugh Addict. In the Greek version, a man complains to a slave-merchant that his new slave has died. The slave-merchant replies, "When he was with me, he never did any such thing!"[9]

In Mark Twain's humorous short story "A Nevada Funeral", two characters use a series of euphemisms for death including 'kicked the bucket' and 'departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne no traveller returns'.[10]

In 1959, Tony Hancock and Sid James performed a similar sketch involving a dead tortoise.[11]

In 1963, Benny Hill performed a sketch entitled "The Taxidermist" (written by Dave Freeman) on The Benny Hill Show in which he attempted to pass off a stuffed duck as a parrot (blaming its different appearance on "the steaming" and "the shrinkage"). John Cleese later admitted that he watched Hill's show during this period, but didn't recall this particular piece.[12]

In the 1960s Freddie "Parrot Face" Davies included an obviously stuffed caged parrot as part of his stage routine, occasionally complaining that he had been swindled by the seller.[13]

To "call a spade a spade" is a figurative expression. It is also referred to as "let's call a spade a spade, not a gardening tool" which refers to calling something "as it is",[1] that is, by its right or proper name, without "beating about the bush"—being outspoken about it, truthfully, frankly, and directly, even to the point of being blunt or rude, and even if the subject is considered coarse, impolite, or unpleasant. The idiom originates in the classical Greek of Plutarch's Apophthegmata Laconica, and was introduced into the English language in 1542 in Nicolas Udall's translation of the Apophthegmes, where Erasmus had seemingly replaced Plutarch's images of "trough" and "fig" with the more familiar "spade." The idiom has appeared in many literary and popular works, including those of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, W. Somerset Maugham, and Jonathan Swift.

>>3643702

The ultimate source of this idiom is a phrase in Plutarch's Apophthegmata Laconica:'τὴν σκάφην σκάφην λέγοντας (tēn skaphēn skaphēn legontas).[6] The word σκαφη (skaphe) means "basin, or trough."[7] Lucian De Hist. Conscr. (41) has τα συκα συκα, την σκαφην δε σκαφην ονομασων (ta suka suka, ten skaphen de skaphen onomason),[8] "calling a fig a fig, and a trough a trough".

Erasmus translated Plutarch's σκαφην (skaphe), as if from σπάθη (spáthe), as ligo "shovel" in his Apophthegmatum opus. Gandhi Lakshmi speculates that the introduction of the word "shovel" may have been a conscious, dramatic choice rather than a mistranslation.[9]

The phrase was introduced to English in 1542 in Nicolas Udall's translation of Erasmus' work, Apophthegmes, that is to saie, prompte saiynges. First gathered by Erasmus, as follows:[9]

Philippus aunswered, that the Macedonians wer feloes of no fyne witte in their termes but altogether grosse, clubbyshe, and rusticall, as they whiche had not the witte to calle a spade by any other name than a spade.

In the expression, the word spade refers to the instrument used to move earth, a very common tool.[9] The same word was used in England, Denmark, and in the Netherlands,[10] Erasmus' country of origin.[11]

"dorothy" is running district 22

>>3643735

Usage

Brewer includes the expression in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable in 1913,[5] providing a definition largely consistent with contemporary English usage in the early 21st century.[4][2][3] The Oxford English Dictionary records a forceful, obscene variant, "to call a spade a bloody shovel", attested since 1919.[12]

The phrase appeared in Joseph Devlin's book How to Speak and Write Correctly (1910), where he satirized speakers who chose their words to show superiority: "For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it."[13]

Oscar Wilde uses the phrase in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), when the character Lord Henry Wotton remarks: "It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for." [14] Wilde uses it again in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).[15] Other authors who have used it in their works include Charles Dickens and W. Somerset Maugham.[9]

The expression is also used in Spanish-speaking countries as "a llamar al pan pan, y al vino vino." This translates as "to call bread bread, and to call wine wine." It has the same connotations as the previously mentioned English versions regarding spades.

A similar expression can be found in French-speaking countries as "appeler un chat, un chat." This translates as "to call a cat a cat". It also has the same connotation as the English version regarding spades.

As perceived slur

The phrase predates the use of the word "spade" as an ethnic slur against African Americans,[9] which was not recorded until 1928; however, in contemporary U.S. society, the idiom is often avoided due to potential confusion with the slur.[16]

Journalist Craig Unger wrote that President George W. Bush and Karl Rove used coded "dog-whistle" language in political campaigning, delivering one message to the overall electorate while at the same time delivering quite a different message to a targeted evangelical Christian political base.[31] William Safire, in Safire's Political Dictionary, offered the example of Bush's criticism during the 2004 presidential campaign of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision denying the U. S. citizenship of any African American. To most listeners the criticism seemed innocuous, Safire wrote, but "sharp-eared observers" understood the remark to be a pointed reminder that Supreme Court decisions can be reversed, and a signal that, if re-elected, Bush might nominate to the Supreme Court a justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade.[1] This view is echoed in a 2004 Los Angeles Times article by Peter Wallsten.[32]

During the 2008 Democratic primaries, several writers[who?] criticized Hillary Clinton's campaign's reliance on code words and innuendo seemingly designed to frame Barack Obama's race as problematic, saying Obama was characterized by the Clinton campaign and its prominent supporters as anti-white due to his association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, as able to attract only black votes, as anti-patriotic, a drug user, possibly a drug seller, and married to an angry, ungrateful black woman.[33]

In 2012, journalist Soledad O'Brien used the phrase "dog whistle" to describe Tea Party Express representative Amy Kremer's accusation that President Barack Obama "does not love America".[34]

Also in that election cycle, Obama's campaign ran an ad that said Mitt Romney was "not one of us".[35] The ad, which Washington Post journalist Karen Tumulty said "echoes a slogan that has been used as a racial code over at least the past half-century",[36] ran in Ohio, a state that is only 0.52% Mormon.[37]

During the 2014 Republican senate primary in Mississippi, a scandal emerged with politicians[who?] accused of attempting to influence the public by using such "code words" as "food stamps".[38][39][40][41] Senator Ted Cruz called for an investigation,[42] saying that "the ads they ran were racially-charged false attacks".[43]

During the 2016 presidential election campaign and during his presidency, Donald Trump was accused[by whom?] of using racial "dog whistling" techniques.

Look up shibboleth in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A shibboleth (/ˈʃɪbəlɛθ, -ɪθ/ (About this sound listen))[1][2] is any custom or tradition, particularly a speech pattern, that distinguishes one group of people (an ingroup) from others (outgroups).[3][4][5] Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation or keeping out perceived threats.

>>3643812

The term originates from the Hebrew word shibbólet (שִׁבֹּלֶת‬), which literally means the part of a plant containing grains, such as an ear of corn or a stalk of grain[6] or, in different contexts, "stream, torrent".[7][8] The modern use derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect used a differently sounding first consonant. The difference concerns the Hebrew letter shin, which is now pronounced as [ʃ] (as in shoe).[9]

Recorded in the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead inflicted a military defeat upon the invading tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BCE), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the River Jordan back into their home territory and the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. To identify and kill these Ephraimites, the Gileadites told each suspected survivor to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimite dialect resulted in a pronunciation that, to Gileadites, sounded like sibboleth.[9] In the King James Bible[10] the anecdote appears thus (with the word already in its current English spelling):

And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;

Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

In geometry, the statement that the angles opposite the equal sides of an isosceles triangle are themselves equal is known as the pons asinorum (Latin pronunciation: [ˈpons asiˈnoːrʊm]; English: /ˈpɒnz ˌæsɪˈnɔːrəm/ PONZ ass-i-NOR-əm), typically translated as

"bridge of asses".

This statement is Proposition 5 of Book 1 in Euclid's Elements, and is also known as the isosceles triangle theorem. Its converse is also true: if two angles of a triangle are equal, then the sides opposite them are also equal.

The name of this statement is also used metaphorically for a problem or challenge which will separate the sure of mind from the simple, the fleet thinker from the slow, the determined from the dallier, to represent a critical test of ability or understanding.

>>3643874

Another medieval term for the pons asinorum was Elefuga which, according to Roger Bacon, comes from Greek elegia "misery", and Latin fuga "flight", that is "flight of the wretches". Though this etymology is dubious, it is echoed in Chaucer's use of the term "flemyng of wreches" for the theorem.[12]

There are two possible explanations for the name pons asinorum, the simplest being that the diagram used resembles an actual bridge. But the more popular explanation is that it is the first real test in the Elements of the intelligence of the reader and functions as a "bridge" to the harder propositions that follow.[13] Gauss supposedly once espoused a similar belief in the necessity of immediately understanding Euler's identity as a benchmark pursuant to becoming a first-class mathematician.[14]

Similarly, the name Dulcarnon is given to the 47th proposition of Book I of Euclid, better known as the Pythagorean theorem, after the Arabic Dhū 'l qarnain , meaning "the owner of the two horns", because diagrams of the theorem showed two smaller squares like horns at the top of the figure. The term is also used as a metaphor for a dilemma.[12] The theorem was also sometimes called "the Windmill" for similar reasons.[15]

>>3643884

Metaphorical usage

Uses of the pons asinorum as a metaphor include:

Richard Aungerville's Philobiblon contains the passage "Quot Euclidis discipulos retrojecit Elefuga quasi scopulos eminens et abruptus, qui nullo scalarum suffragio scandi posset! Durus, inquiunt, est his sermo; quis potest eum audire?", which compares the theorem to a steep cliff that no ladder may help scale and asks how many would-be geometers have been turned away.[12]

The term pons asinorum, in both its meanings as a bridge and as a test, is used as a metaphor for finding the middle term of a syllogism.[12]

The 18th-century poet Thomas Campbell wrote a humorous poem called "Pons asinorum" where a geometry class assails the theorem as a company of soldiers might charge a fortress; the battle was not without casualties.[16]

Economist John Stuart Mill called Ricardo's Law of Rent the pons asinorum of economics.[17]

Pons Asinorum is the name given to a particular configuration of a Rubik's Cube.

Eric Raymond referred to the issue of syntactically-significant whitespace in the Python programming language as its pons asinorum.[18]

>>3643904

The Finnish aasinsilta and Swedish åsnebrygga is a literary technique where a tenuous, even contrived connection between two arguments or topics, which is almost but not quite a non sequitur, is used as an awkward transition between them.[19] In serious text, it is considered a stylistic error, since it belongs properly to the stream of consciousness- or causerie-style writing. Typical examples are ending a section by telling what the next section is about, without bothering to explain why the topics are related, expanding a casual mention into a detailed treatment, or finding a contrived connection between the topics (e.g. "We bought some red wine; speaking of red liquids, tomorrow is the World Blood Donor Day").

In Dutch, ezelsbruggetje ('little bridge of asses') is the word for a mnemonic. The same is true for the German Eselsbrücke.

In Czech, oslí můstek has two meanings – it can describe either a contrived connection between two topics or a mnemonic.

>>3643912

pons asinorum

Pons asinorum is Latin for “bridge of asses”. During medieval times, this name was given to the fifth proposition in the first book of Euclid’s The Elements. In the original Greek, this proposition reads:

T⁢ω~⁢ν ι⁢σ⁢o⁢σ⁢κ⁢ε⁢λ⁢ω~⁢ν τ⁢ρ⁢ι⁢γ⁢ω´⁢ν⁢ω⁢ν α⁢ι π⁢ρ⁢o⁢ς τ⁢η~ β⁢α´⁢σ⁢ε⁢ι γ⁢ω⁢ν⁢ι´⁢α⁢ι ι⁢σ⁢α⁢ι α⁢λ⁢λ⁢η´⁢λ⁢α⁢ι⁢ς ε⁢ι⁢σ⁢ι´⁢ν, κ⁢α⁢ι π⁢ρ⁢o⁢σ⁢ε⁢κ⁢β⁢λ⁢η⁢θ⁢ε⁢ι⁢σ⁢ω~⁢ν τ⁢ω~⁢ν ι⁢σ⁢ω⁢ν ε⁢υ⁢θ⁢ε⁢ι⁢ω~⁢ν α⁢ι υ⁢π⁢oτ⁢η⁢ν β⁢α´⁢σ⁢ι⁢ν γ⁢ω⁢ν⁢ι´⁢α⁢ι ι⁢σ⁢α⁢ι α⁢λ⁢λ⁢η´⁢λ⁢α⁢ι⁢ς ε⁢σ⁢o⁢ν⁢τ⁢α⁢ι.

A translation of this proposition is:

In isosceles triangles, the angles at the base equal one another, and, if the equal straight lines are produced further, then the angles under the base equal one another.

There are a couple of reasons why this proposition was named pons asinorum:

• Euclid’s diagram for this proposition looks like a bridge.

• This is the first nontrivial proposition in The Elements and thus tests a student’s ability to understand more advanced concepts in Euclidean geometry. Therefore, this proposition serves as a bridge from from the trivial portion of Euclidean geometry to the nontrivial portion, and the people who cannot cross this bridge are considered to be unintelligent.

For more details, please see http://planetmath.org/?op=getmsg&id=15847a post written by rspuzio and http://planetmath.org/?op=getmsg&id=15849a post written by Wkbj79.

References

1 Mourmouras, Dimitrios. The Elements: The original Greek text. URL: http://www.physics.ntua.gr/Faculty/mourmouras/euclidhttp://www.physics.ntua.gr/Faculty/mourmouras/euclid

2 Wikipedia. Pons asinorum. URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pons_Asinorumhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pons_Asinorum

>>3643912

>Eselsbrücke

German

FWOTD – 6 June 2017

Etymology

Esel (“donkey”) +‎ -s- +‎ Brücke (“bridge”), calque of Latin pōns asinōrum, 18th c. Compare Dutch ezelsbrug.

Pronunciation

Audio

MENU0:00

IPA(key): /ˈeːzlsˌbʀʏkə/

Noun

Eselsbrücke f (genitive Eselsbrücke, plural Eselsbrücken)

(colloquial) mnemonic (a short sentence used to help remember something)

Baue dir einfach eine Eselsbrücke. ― Simply come up with a mnemonic.

Synonyms: Merksatz, Merkspruch

A mnemonic (/nəˈmɒnɪk/,[1] the first "m" is silent) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery as specific tools to encode any given information in a way that allows for efficient storage and retrieval. Mnemonics aid original information in becoming associated with something more accessible or meaningful—which, in turn, provides better retention of the information. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often used for lists and in auditory form, such as short poems, acronyms, or memorable phrases, but mnemonics can also be used for other types of information and in visual or kinesthetic forms. Their use is based on the observation that the human mind more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous, or otherwise "relatable" information, rather than more abstract or impersonal forms of information.

The word "mnemonic" is derived from the Ancient Greek word μνημονικός (mnēmonikos), meaning "of memory, or relating to memory"[2] and is related to Mnemosyne ("remembrance"), the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. Both of these words are derived from μνήμη (mnēmē), "remembrance, memory".[3] Mnemonics in antiquity were most often considered in the context of what is today known as the art of memory.

Ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished between two types of memory: the "natural" memory and the "artificial" memory. The former is inborn, and is the one that everyone uses instinctively. The latter in contrast has to be trained and developed through the learning and practice of a variety of mnemonic techniques.

Mnemonic systems are techniques or strategies consciously used to improve memory. They help use information already stored in long-term memory to make memorisation an easier task.