‘My goal in life is to become an adjective’
I was thrilled last month when one of my clients asked me to “Wylie-ize” part of her website. (Thank you, Libby Catalinich!)
I’ve always wanted to be a verb!
‘Joycean, Shakespearean, Faulknerian’
That reminded me of this exchange between characters in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot:
“Bankheadian has a ring,” Madeleine said. “It’s better than Bankheadesque.”
“Or Bankheadish.”
“Ish is terrible all around. There’s Joycean, Shakespearean, Faulknerian. But ish? Who is there who’s an ish?”
“Thomas Mannish?”
“Kafkaesque,” Leonard said. “Pynchonesque! See, Pynchon’s already an adjective. Gaddis. What would Gaddis be? Gaddisesque? Gaddisy?”
“You can’t really do it with Gaddis,” Madeleine said.
“Bellovian,” Leonard said. “It’s extra nice when they change the spelling slightly. Nabokovian already has the v. So does Chekhovian. The Russians have it made. Tolstoyan! That guy was an adjective waiting to happen.”
“Don’t forget Tolstoyanism,” Madeleine said.
“My God!” Leonard said. “A noun! I’ve never even dreamed of being a noun.”
Now I feel a little sorry for Eugenides’ characters. They’re daydreaming about becoming adjectives and nouns. I’d much rather be a verb!
How can you verbify a name to make your copy more creative?
Share your favorites in the comments below.
Play With Your Words
Neurologists call it “the pleasure of the text,” the reward readers get from figuring out figurative language. (It can be quite a reward: If your wordplay is funny enough, your readers’ brains even deliver a little dose of dopamine.)
Learn to tap wordplay’s superpowers at Master the Art of Storytelling — our online creative-writing workshop on May 17-21.
There, you’ll learn to flip phrases; compress details; sub sound-alikes; list, rhyme and twist — even coin new words with free online tools that do most of the work for you. And you'll polish your skills in a wordplay workout, with recipes for wordplay from anagram to oxymoron.
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