If you're the sort of person that makes a lot of horrible puns and a lot of unwelcome sexual advances, then you often hear the word "entendre." As far as I can tell, "entendre" is a slightly Frenchier (i.e. classier) way of informing someone that that is what she said. So I tried to look up entendre in the dictionary but it isn't there. But it is--like almost everything--on wikipedia.
Like having a tub of Vaseline around the house, Wikipedia is sometimes fun and sometimes useful. As well as being a place where you can add pictures of Donald Duck dressed up as firefighter to an article about
Roe v. Wade, wikipedia also sometimes has very informative informational facts. Check out these tidbits from the page on
double entendre [all words in brackets are ones that I added]:
- The British phrase equivalent to "That's what she said" is "...as the actress said to the bishop". [For example: "Be careful putting all of that blood pudding into my boot...as the actress said to the bishop." This, by the way, is my new favorite phrase.]
- 'That's what she said' is a "a prime example of casual humor in Africa." [I swear to God that is exactly how it is phrased: casual humor in Africa.]
- ...in Are You Being Served? [a British comedy], Mrs. Slocombe makes frequent references to her "pussy", such as "It's a wonder I'm here at all, you know. My pussy got soakin' wet. I had to dry it out in front of the fire before I left." Someone unfamiliar with sexual slang might find this statement funny simply because of the references to her pussy cat, whereas generally a viewer would be expected to detect the innuendo ("pussy" is sexual slang for vagina). [Once again, I didn't change any of that.]
While I was reading this wikipedia article at work (I'm not very productive while I'm at work, sorry Obama!), my coworker mentioned that her semester was very busy and that she felt like it would be over soon.
"It's going too fast. I can't enjoy it," she said.
Seeing an opportunity to use my new favorite phrase, I replied with a wink:
"...as the actress said to the bishop."
Apparently she was not as knowledgeable about British culture as I was, so she had no idea what the hell I was talking about. I helpfully explained that I was comparing her semester to intercourse and her feeling that it was going by quickly to premature ejaculation. She very convincingly pretended not to be amused.
So I started reading out loud from the wikipedia article to her until I got to the section entitled, "
Triple Entendre."
"There's no such thing," she said.
"Of course there is," I replied with my famous patience and understanding for complete idiots. "It's a pun that has three meanings instead of two."
"Give me one that actually has three," she said.
And even though I thought that would be a pretty good moment to pull out a 'that's what she said,' I restrained myself. It wouldn't have made a whole lot of sense anyway.
Instead, I read her some triple entendres from the examples in the wikipedia article. Unfortunately all three of them sucked really bad. One of them was in French. This one was the worst:
[Another example is] the children's rhyme "This little piggy went to market." Typically a pig goes to be sold at market, but in this case the context suggests it went to buy something. The third meaning is going to sell at the market, as a farmer does.
What the fuck does that even mean? As a farmer does!? Is that really the point behind that nursery rhyme? I doubt it.
Not surprisingly, my co-worker was still not convinced that triple entendres actually exist. So I made one up.
"If there were an African-American announcing a baseball game, and while announcing that game he talked about how the home team's uniform had been redesigned with a different
chromatization, you could say that he was making a color commentary."
At this point I awaited her applause.
"But that doesn't count," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because it isn't sexual. Entendres have to be sexual."
I said that it was borderline racist, which is kind of like a sexual joke (once again, sorry Obama).
"Still doesn't count," she said.
Ugh. Some people are impossible to please.
Anyway, almost entirely out of spite, I came up with three triple entendres of a sexual nature. Here they are.
Punchlines are in italics (explanations are in parentheses):
- There is a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania that has a small, conservative community. Almost everyone works in the mine. One day a worker is caught sexually abusing an underage girl. But because the community is so small and repressed, everyone sweeps it under the rug so that it doesn't become a major deal. It is thereafter known as the Minor (Miner) Incident. (He's a miner, she's a minor, and the event itself is minor).
- There's a prison camp where all the guards are nutcrackers and the prisoners are all walnuts. The guards need to get some information out of a particular walnut prisoner, but the prisoner has lost his mental stability under the stressful conditions of the prison camp. In order to get the information out of him, the nutcrackers apply a particularly brutal and sexually based torture. But because of his mental condition, he yields no useful intelligence and becomes known as a tough nut to crack. (Nut like his balls, nut like he's crazy, and nut like he's an actual walnut).
- This one is the best: The US Military decides, because of reduced funding, that they are going to have to close one military base within the country's borders. Without having any better way to decide which one will be closed, the military determines they will have a round-robin softball tournament. Each base puts a co-ed team together. After the first game of the tournament, the winning team has secured the future of their fort. There is much celebration. In the second game, things are tense. Everyone knows that losing the game could mean losing their jobs. As one team falls behind late into the seventh inning, they start to pull dirty tricks. One player takes a long lead off first. Then, suddenly, he gropes the breast of the female first-baseman in order to distract her and then makes a run for it. He slides in under the tag and the umpire yells, "SAFE!" His team goes on to win the game and he is always known as the man who stole second base. (Second base like the second military fort, second base like her breast, and second base like the white square on the ground).
If you're reading this in a public place, all the people around you are no doubt wondering why you're groaning so much. Tell them you're only groaning because you love it. Then wink and say, "...that's what she said."
Unless you're British.
