Rhetorical Questions, Answered!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q: The average man's IQ is 107. The average brown trout's IQ is 4. So why can't a man catch a brown trout? A: Lower-tech animals can be much quicker. ( Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, 2009)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jonathan: Whatever happened to Roquefort dressing? Hilary: It just turned into "bleu cheese" dressing, right? Jonathan: They didn't coexist for a while, like Neanderthal and Cro Magnon? Oddfellow: Yes, but only after the Pre-Camemberian Era, a span of very hard cheeses. [Did you know that cheesemaking colanders have been discovered amongst Roquefort-sur-Soulzon's prehistoric relics?] [Also: not only did cavemen invent the cheese wheel, but they also invented bleu cheese. We present, collaged for your convenience, Exhibit A below: Rogue Creamery's Caveman Blue.]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q: What, then, is truth?
A: A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people. (Nietzsche, "On Truths and Lies in the Extra-Moral Sense," 1874).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q: "Why should I not think the best of those who are kind to me?" ( The Quiver, 1881). A: "The problem with kindness, for Nabokov, is that most visible or public forms of it are fake" (Will Norman & Duncan White, Transitional Nabokov, 2009). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q: Why didn't Rilke just write, "Consider your life sacred. Consider all other lives sacred." Why did he have to be such an asshole? (asks William Keckler) A: "Rilke was distressed because he could not find an adequate German word for 'palm of hand.'" [He rejected Handfläche, flats of the hand, and the archaic Handteller, hollow of the hand.] (André Gide via Beckett via Mark Nixon.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What in the universe is it all about? "Ultimately, it's all about the music, isn't it?" (Samuel David McIlhagga, 2006). (Illustration from Punch, 1893.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[We answered this rhetorical question a few years ago, but the vintage illustration is "new," courtesy of Punch, 1877.] Q: How many beans make five? A: It’s something of a trick question. The answer is "one." One leguminous pod contains five seeds. Note that this riddle is a corruption of "How many beans make fava." Again, the answer is "one," though admittedly it's one very broad bean. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q: What need of Siege and Conquest in a Play, / When Love can do the work as well as they? (Elkanah Settle, Ibrahim, the Illustrious Bassa [1676]) A: What need, indeed! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q: "Aren't red and blue 'off white' too?" — HBG2A: It's a gray area. (Forgive us.) Here's an image by Jason Paluck showing that red and blue do indeed combine to form off-white.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q: "Do the clouds want to chime in on how they think my day went?" ( William Keckler) A: No; however, clouds do want many things:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6334863961_cc84643a12_oQ: "[What's] the proper pronunciation of the triple-m configuration when a vowel is blocking the rear exit[?]" — Jeff HawkinsA: Recall that at the end of each episode of "The Dating Game," the host and winning contestants would dramatically blow a kiss to the viewers. When we make exaggerated kissing gestures, a lip-smacking "mmmwa" sound invariably accompanies the pantomime. That's the correct pronunciation of the final m in a triple- m configuration, even if the context is quarrelsome.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jeff Hawkins explores " preemptive rhetoric," in which rhetorical answers deny being asked. It's a phenomenon we're all familiar with but probably didn't know the name of. See the link for examples, and consider this freshly personal one: [The context is that no one at dinner could recall the name of that well-respected character actor. Hours later, Oddfellow makes a telephone call.] [The caller picks up and Oddfellow exclaims.] A: John Malkovich! Q: Aren't you supposed to be asleep? Preemptive rhetoric! Thanks, Jeff! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
After fully 27 years, a rhetorical question gets answered during the concert film A Diamond in the Mind. Simon: [directing a lyric from the "The Reflex" to his keyboardist] "So why-y-y don't you use it?" Nick: "I'm saving it for later." |
Page 7 of 10
> Older Entries...
Original Content Copyright © 2026 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
|
