In ‘Socrates seems to be pink’
It’s the seems makes semanticists think:
‘How might I express it
In some modal logic?
With x (where x = strong drink)’.
—William Deakspeare
A millipede said, “I am beat!
My scansion will never be neat.
For when I write limericks,
Whatever my clever tricks,
I always have too many feet.”
—Pete Bleackley
By our seeking distinctions discriminable,
And eschewing the merely subliminable,
We avoid idealism
In the name of realism
And the strictly phonetically delimitable.
—Pumptilian Perniquity
Cackalackadaisical
While searching for the source of cackalacky
An etymologist from th’Old North State
Did fall for some ideas rather wacky,
Including rash reports o’ a Basque cognate.
This glossarist from North Carolina
Engaged in much historical malarkey,
Proposing sources from olden China
And justified by phonemes wholly archi-.
It’s clear that our vocabularist Tar Heel—
Who now believes in substrata Arábic—
Can’t really tell what derivations are real,
And falls for anything polysyllabic.
I pity our baffled glossarian,
’Cause cackalack’s plainly Tocharian.
—α-Betty Abū Gida
