Wednesday, July 31, 2013

One-word Quotes

Yesterday at a meal it came up that one of Miss Language's friends has just watched (sit down here) The Princess Bride for the first time. (fan yourself and recover a bit. I know. Poor deprived young adult.)

Anyhow.

We all started quoting the movie and of course came to "Inconceivable." And we began to wonder what other one-word quotes are famous. We came up with a few but I am curious about what you will come up with.

The follow-up question is this, Do one-word quotes exist in books, too? Or do they need the inflection etc of a song or movie? The only contender we came up with was So (or more accurately Hwaet), although I thought the So could be just as well Vonnegut as Beowulf. 

The final tunnel in this rabbit trail was one-word tags: Mr Music suggested for example that there is really only one place to go from "Ishmael."

Anyone here want to contribute to this discussion?  :)

3 comments:

  1. I wonder if there was ever a short post that used the phrase "come up" more times... ack...

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  2. I'll have to think on this a bit. I know lots of PHRASES... The only one-word quote that immediately came to mind is from My Fair Lady: "Damn, damn, damn, damn!" (said in the 4 tones of the Chinese language)but I suppose that doesn't count, as it is four!

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  3. "KHAN!" from Star Trek: Wrath of Khan
    "Bueller?" from Ferris Bueller's Day Off
    "Waaa-er" from Miracle Worker
    "Rosebud." from Citizen Kane
    "Ditto" from Ghost
    "Precioussss" from The Hobbit (Don't know if that counts since it was usually "my preciousss, but I tried!
    Another good one liner from the Princess Bride is "Mahwage"

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Leave your bananas here, please. :)