A hand where the head should be

The line that I hoped would stand out in the last post was this:

He bombed the didn'ts and sneered at the dids and noised his noise the globe over.

It is an example of Anthimeria, the use of one part of speech in place of another. In this case, "did" is a verb used in place of a noun, while "noised" is a noun used as a verb. It was hard to find a striking instance of this because, as I soon realized, we do this all the time in English. A persevering worker "soldiers on", we "text" our friends on the cell phone, and we bed down in our beds, are housed in our houses, and on and on and on.

Once again, the line between figure and plain English is hard to find. It's a "figure" when it's "unusual", but usual English is highly figured....

But the mnemonic image is simple. Picture a woman named Maria, but picture with one body part where another should be--a hand switched with the head, for example. (If you don't know anyone named Maria, attend the nearest Catholic Mass and you'll meet two or three.) If the Maria in question happens to be your father's sister or mother's sister, you're in luck: "Auntie Maria". If not, then picture her covered with ants and you have "Anty Maria".