Sunday, September 29, 2019

Ignorant, humorless, and dead certain …

… You Too Can Have a Viral Tweet Like Mine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The “Iambic pentameter FTW” reply guy was wrong on two counts. First of all, the lyrics in question are not in iambic pentameter, a poetic meter best described as “the one that goes da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA” (that is to say: five iambs, or “da-DA”s, per line). And second of all, FTW, or “for the win”—a prepositional idiom that Wiktionary defines as “being the best; being great, awesome, amazing or spectacular; sure to succeed”—is not a phrase that remotely applies to iambic pentameter, the most overrated of all meters. It’s a perfectly serviceable meter, but it’s the Sweeney Todd/Hallelujah tweet of meters: with so many other good ones out there, why does that one get all the glory?
I hardly think it's overrated. Precisely because it is so serviceable.


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