Nathan W. Ho

So, my sister calls me up recently (with a grin in her voice - you can totally hear it), and tells me that a co-worker shared something with her that she wanted to tell me. Apparently her co-worker had seen an interesting bumper sticker, and found it both confusing and funny - so my sister then proceeds to toss out this phrase to me:

Subduction leads to orogeny

And I’m thinking, “what the….great, from the mind of a pervert with a truly pathetic grasp of the English language” - but she patiently asks me, “Do you know what that means? Does it make sense to you?” in a hinting kind of way. She then spells out the words for me, and I take the time to look up their meaning (which slowly come back to me from my college earth sciences class…)

Orogeny (def): the process of mountain formation especially by folding of the earth’s crust

Subduction (def): the action or process in plate tectonics of the edge of one crustal plate descending below the edge of another

So after my sister and I stopped giggling, I stopped to think about this phrase a little more. I mean, c’mon - you *know* that the author(s) didn’t intend for you to read it the first time correctly (I’m guessing a bunch of geologists who were up too late drinking came up with this one - it’s right up there with “Don’t take salt for granite” / “don’t take salt for granted”). Whomever created that bumper sticker totally expects you to read it this way:

Seduction leads to erogeny

Of course, erogeny isn’t a real word - but by inference, it leads to the word “erogenous” - which is a very well known word in the adult world today *ahem* Both phrases make sense, but one is innocent in it’s basic meaning (the meaning - NOT the author’s intent), while the other is obviously not.

So, an interesting sticker - albeit not one I’ll ever own or put on something…

My sister and I then started discussing with whom else we should share this interesting sticker statement - and we instantly thought of our older sister (who is pregant), which then lead me to come up the following list:

Reponses to “Subduction leads to Orogeny” from:

• A pregnant woman: “Shut up - I know, I’m pregnant!!” (followed by a thrown object)
• A nerdy scientist: “Don’t I wish…..umm, wait….?”
• A parent: “It had better not, or you’re going to be grounded until you turn 50!!!
• A teenager: “heh heh heh……yeah….”
• A cop: “I’m going to have to write you a ticket for that…”
• A preacher: “You’re going to go to hell for that…HUH!!!”
• A biker (motorcycle): “Heck, that’s nothing…why just last week I….”
• A little old lady: “WELL!! Back in MY day, we didn’t use THAT kind of language in public…”

Feel free to come up with your own fun response….

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 5:03 pm and is filed under English Language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.