Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Strange Rhyme …

… courtesy Fats Waller:

Your pedal extremities are colossal.
To me you look just like a fossil.

Guess the song? (Hint: there's no way to correctly apostrophize (sorry about that) the second word in the title.)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"your feet's too big"

Anonymous said...

I can't stand you 'cause your feets too big.

bjkeefe said...

Well done, both of you!

Mo G has the apostrophe the way it appears in the metadata for the song. I still argue that this is incorrect -- "feets" presumably is plural, and we also have an implied contraction here, from "feets is" -- but it's probably not worth going on at length about.

Anonymous said...

Couldn't the implied contraction be "feet is"?
Sounds more like Fats to me, wrong on purpose.

bjkeefe said...

Yes, it could be "feet is." But you know it's really "feets is." From other lines in the song, it's clear that there is more than one foot in play.

I think Fats is going nukuler on the grammar here, just to piss off Whitey. And that's all good. But I think that he's talking about "feets is," ultimately.

I suppose the contraction involving dropping the trailing "s" from "feets" and the leading "i" from "is" is still arguable.

(Somewhere, Fats is rolling his eyes and muttering, "Just listen to the goddam piano, would you please?")

bjkeefe said...

And when I get that look, I do not say, "Feet, do your stuff."

I say, as do we all, "Feets, do your stuff.

Anonymous said...

Ok, wait, but... (and this is the last I will think about this)...

"Feet are" would be correct, "feet is" is still plural, just intentionally with the wrong verb.

I only know of this song cuz I listen to the piano playing - Fats rocks.

bjkeefe said...

I still think the colloquialism is "feets is," but we're in agreement on the important part -- Fats do rock.

ShareThis