Zeugma

Zeugma This is a stylistic device that plays upon two different meanings of the word — the direct and the figurative meanings, thus creating a pun. The effect comes from the use of a word in the same formal (grammatical) relations, but in different semantic relations with the surrounding words in the phrase or sentence, due to the simultaneous realization (in one text) of the literal and figurative meaning of a word:

A leopard changes his spots, as often as he goes from one spot to another (spot = 1). Dora plunged at once into privileged intimacy and into the middle of the room. (Shaw) She possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. (O. Henry) She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief. (Dickens) At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humor, put on kimono, airs, and water to boil for coffee. (O. Henry) The title of O. Wilde's comedy The importance of being Earnest plays upon the fact that the word earnest (= serious) and the male name Ernest sound in the same way: one of the female characters in the play wished to marry a man with the name of Ernest, as it seemed to her to guarantee his serious intentions. A similar effect may result from the decomposition of a set-phrase, when the direct and figurative meanings of the words within the set-phrase are realised at the same time: May's mother always stood on her gentility, and Dot's mother never stood on anything but her active little feet. (Dickens) ' When Bishop Berkley said: 'there is no matter' And proved it — it was no matter what he said'. (Byron) One of the characters of I . Carrol's book 'Alice in Wonderland' is called Mock Turtl; this name has been coined from the phrase "mock turtle soup". 30 One more example of zeugma (or decomposition of a set-phrase) is represented in the humorous story about two duellists who fired at each other and both missed, so when one of the seconds said, after the duel, 'Now, please, shake your hands!', the other answered 'There is no need for that. Their hands must have been shaking since morning'.