Re: CHAT anecdotage (was: Easy and Interesting Languages -- Website)

Ray Brown scripsit:

> Yep - 'anecdote' means much the same in English. I's often - tho by no
> means always - associated with older people and their habit of beginning
> "Now, when I was a boy....."/ "Now, when I was a girl....". Some people
> humorously refer to this stage in one's life as their "anecdotage"   ;)
A pun on "dotage" = "senility", for non-anglophones.

> >"Anekdot" HAS to be
> >funny in Russian. Better to know it before.
>
> I see - what we call a 'joke' in English   :)
m-w.com splits the difference, defining "anecdote" as "a usually
short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident".
Seems fair to me.

Note that there are jokes which aren't anecdotes: one-liners, two-liners,
puns (though some puns appear at the end of an anecdote contrived to
exhibit them).

--
Winter:  MIT,                                   John Cowan
Keio, INRIA,                                    jcowan@reutershealth.com
Issue lots of Drafts.                           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
So much more to understand!                     http://www.reutershealth.com
Might simplicity return?                        (A "tanka", or extended haiku)

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