Why We Need “Whom”

Because we have direct object, that’s why! The humor is that he’s questioning who is doing the watching, and who is being watched. IOW, he should say “Who’s watching whom?”. The way it’s written, he’s merely repeating his question without saying what they’re watching.

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English is a somewhat phonetic language, but certainly not very consistent about pronunciation. I recommend XKCD as a good source of intellectual humor. This is less extreme than the similar joke about ghoti, but I still like it:

I mentioned the RTFM motto a while back; this one is longer. Last two panels:

Actually, “go back and” isn’t necessary. (We call that phrase a pleonasm. It’s extra words.)

First the comic:

Maybe he means something like “vivid.” (What do you think?) On the other hand, maybe he’s listing synonyms for “bucket.” I suspect “bucket” has more than two synonyms, though. Maybe he should say that the bucket list is short!

Concise means just enough words, and no extra words. He needs only one word, and it’s not a list.

A portmanteau is an old type of suitcase into which you dump a bunch of unrelated stuff. We linguists use the term when we combine parts of unrelated words to make a new word. One example is “infotainment,” a combination of information and entertainment. The tendency in English is to take out the hyphen when the word becomes familiar, and sometimes I still see info-tainment.

Here’s a portmanteau word I ran into for the first time this morning in a Morning Brew article about the Disney company’s 100th anniversary coming up this October. I made it bold so you could spot it more easily:

The result is pragmatism combined with some good old-fashioned fun: The wartime cartoons and print media are infused with patriotic PSAs while staying true to the brand’s comedic quirkiness, making for prime propaganda-tainment. Ultimately, they helped keep the company out of bankruptcy and raised audiences’ spirits during some of history’s darkest hours.

Here’s a link to the original article, which doesn’t contain the portmanteau:
https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2023/08/10/donald-duck-and-uncle-sam-fought-side-by-side-in-wwii

Of course I have to put in a picture from the article:

So what’s a portmanteau word that you like?