There’s some
fascinating trivia about Charlie Chaplin over on IMDB:
- He was born four days before Adolf Hitler, in 1889.
- He had bright blue eyes.
- His understudy in England was Stan Laurel; they sailed to America together and shared a boarding house when they arrived.
- In 1925, he was the first actor to appear on the cover of Time magazine.
- At the height of his popularity, he failed to win a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest.
- His imprints were removed (and subsequently lost) from the Hollywood walk of fame because of his suspected communist views.
- Although Adolf Hitler despised Chaplin, he was aware of his popularity, and grew the Chaplin moustache to endear himself to the people.
- He never became a U.S. citizen.
- He composed about 500 melodies, including Smile.
- The last film he saw, in 1976, was Rocky.
- In 1978, his dead body was stolen for over two months. When it was recovered, it was re-buried in a vault encased in cement.
Credit: Portrait photograph
of Charlie Chaplin via Wikimedia.
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I like discovering linguistic terms for things that I thought were too trivial to be given an official name.
Eggcorns
An Eggcorn is a special case of a malapropism: a mistaken phrase that retains some of the original meaning. For example, where a malapropism might be the nonsensical, “He is the very pineapple [pinnacle] of politeness“, an eggcorn might be, “Chickens coming home to roast“.
The term derives from a woman who thought acorns were egg corns.
Mondegreens
A Mondegreen is a mis-construal of a phrase in a song, poem or lyric. The most famous of these is the Jimi Hendrix line, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky“, which is often misheard as, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy“. However, some argue that this particular example is not really a mishearing, as Jimi may have purposefully sung the line to be interpreted both ways.
The Kiss This Guy database has an excellent collection of mondegreens, including the awesome, “Might as well face it, you’re a d**k with a glove” – Addicted to Love, by Robert Palmer.
The term derives from a misheard line in a poem, that was originally, “And laid him on the green“.
(Thanks to Francesco Cetraro for pointing me to the video above, which has some wonderful mondegreens, including “Steven Seagal”, which is always funny, in any context.)
Charactonyms / Aptronyms
An Aptronym is a person’s name that suits them, such as the American football player Chuck Long. Similarly, a
Charactonym is the name of a fictional character that describes their personality, such as Mr. Bumble from Oliver Twist, or many of the adult character names from Harry Potter.