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PERVERB/ˈpəːˌvɜːb/ A portmanteau proverb. Perverbs were popularised by the American Harry Matthews in his Selected Declarations of Dependence in 1977 and have gained a small but respectable niche among aficionados of wordplay. The word was allegedly coined by Maxine Groffsky and is presumably a blend or portmanteau from perverse proverb. You create one by snapping a couple of existing proverbs in half and joining the end of one to the beginning of the other. So you might create “A rolling stone gets the worm”, “Don’t count your chickens before you can walk”, “The devil takes the sailor’s delight”, and “The road to Hell wasn’t paved in a day”. One recent writer has used the term for what he calls portmantreau proverbs, those created by augmenting an existing proverb through adding a single consonant: “Fine swords butter no parsnips”, “Slaughter is the best medicine”. |
Page created 7 May 2005
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