Sri Lanka: Can Any Change Be Expected Shortly?
By Charitha Ratwatte -August 17, 2012
Charitha Ratwatte
The dictionary definition of a ‘pun’: ‘the clever or humorous use of a word that has more than one meaning, or words that have different meanings but sound the same’.
The second word of the headline of today’s column is not exactly a pun, but somewhat akin to one, as it is a play of a similar sounding activity which can be done with the human or animal tongue, spelt differently.
The dictionary meaning of ‘liqueur’ is ‘a strong sweet alcoholic drink, sometimes flavoured with fruit’. The first part of the headline, ‘Posterior,’ is, to quote the dictionary, ‘the part of your body which you sit on’.
There is a cruder word, pronounced and spelt differently, which describes the same identical part of the anatomy. That word is phonetically similar to an alternative word, pronounced and spelt differently, for that quadruped, the humble donkey, which is a native of the Mannar District on this island, and many other parts of the world.
Readers may wonder what took my thought process to the cruder set of words, which is somewhat similar in a pun-ish manner to ‘Posterior Liqueurs’. I have an explanation, but before that I would request the readers, who have the required language skills, to put the cruder version of ‘posterior skills’ into the Sinhala slang equivalent, to appreciate the depth of the contempt which is expressed, when it is so used.
