Why Memes Have Created a New Commedia Dell’Arte

#etymology #linguistics #language #history #literature

[Gavin_M.]

My favorite is "apparatus" which is physics/engineer for "thing which does something but idk what"

[muaddibles]

Categorizing Karens as a literary archetype feels so emotionally wrong but logically right...

[mavisavery]

No archetype can match the chaotic escapades of Florida man.

[Flannel-Channel]

Etymology is really interesting once you start to notice how similar modern traditions and ancient traditions are really. The amount of patterns you see is really uncanny

[haia]

It’s human nature to recreate la comedia dell’arte every so often

[emofrom-mqtt]

Karen and Chad being compared to Adonis and Romeo is so weird but so understandable at the same time 🤚🤚

[BenjaminISmith]

I always thought ACME was a made up cartoon thing, but I recently went to one in New Jersey. It's a common everyday store. So the joke is as if Wile E. Coyote got his gear at Walmart.

[OddSauce]

Let's not forget about the most legendary of them all:

Guy.

[ggg-oxhr]

This dude scratches my itch for etymology that I don’t know I had

[Bnehilda]

Sherlock is also synonymous with genius

[EnbyEl]

In German we also call people a "Kevin" when they are... _simple-minded_

[polygonail]

Here in Brazil, we have 3 equivalents of John Doe: Fulano, Cicrano and Beltrano. Usually we use all 3 when referring to multiple John Does (usually in that exact order).

[WisamSafi]

Don Juan is so famous it was adopted into Arabic. I recall my dad asking me when I started having a beard when I was in my teens “what with the beard, دنجوان" which is the Arabic pronunciation of Don Juan.

[Slinguh]

Don't forget "Mary Sue"

[ianmorris]

It feels so weird to analyze memes like this, and part of it is because he's correct.

[mft-zipy]

I never realized “ACME” was just a placeholder brand name. In old Looney Tunes cartoons the name came up so much I assumed it was a real product or brand or something

[dinoface]

I like to think we're on a picnic and I'm laying on the blanket while you're yelling in my face about this

[MahouShoujoNobue]

I often see people refer to lovey-dovey couples as "just like Romeo and Juliet", and I always think "I certainly hope _not!"_ because "Romeo & Juliet" is not a romance story, it's a tragedy about a three-day-long affair between a 17-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl where 6 people wound up dead. The moral of the story at the time was "Hey young people, don't be so hasty with relationships", but I feel like a good secondary lesson would be to commit fewer murders.

[Leprekon]

I've heard a kid (he was in first grade when he said it, I think he's in 4th grade now) say that "Karen" wasn't actually a name, but something you call a, "Mean lady."

[DominoPivot]

In the Children of Time novels, the author Adrian Tchaikovsky keeps reusing the same names for different characters, slowly building these archetypes in the reader's subconscious. I thought that was a fascinating narrative tool, especially for a story that spans thousands of years. Giving us completely new characters with unique names every chapter would have made it harder to get attached to each of them.