A double entendre (French pronunciation: [dubl t d ) or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two

ways. Often the first (more obvious) meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: oftenrisqu or ironic. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a double entendre as especially being used to "convey an indelicate meaning". It is often used to express potentially offensive opinions without the risks of explicitly doing so. A double entendre may exploit puns to convey the second meaning. Double entendres tend to rely more on multiple meanings of words, or different interpretations of the same primary meaning; they often exploit ambiguity and may be used to introduce it deliberately in a text. Sometimes using a homophone (i.e. a different spelling that yields the same pronunciation) can sometimes be used as a pun as well as a "double entendre" of the subject. Structure A person who is unfamiliar with the hidden or alternative meaning of a sentence may fail to detect its innuendos, aside from observing that others find it humorous for no apparent reason. Perhaps because it is not offensive to those who do not recognize it, innuendo is often used in sitcoms and other comedy considered suitable for children, who may enjoy the comedy while being oblivious to its second meanings. For example, Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing used this ploy to present a surface level description of the play as well as a pun on the Elizabethan use of "nothing" as slang [2] for vagina. A triple entendre is a phrase that can be understood in any of three ways, such as in the cover of the 1981 Rush album Moving Pictures. The left side of the front cover shows a moving company who are carrying paintings out of a building. On the right side, people are shown crying because the pictures carried by the movers are emotionally "moving". Finally, the back cover features a film crew making a [3] "moving picture" of the whole scene. Another example can be observed in the 1995 film GoldenEye, in which the female villain is crushed to death between a tree, to which James Bond quips, "She always did enjoy a good squeeze." This references her death, her method of executing men (crushing them with her [4] legs) and her sexual appetite. Another example is a sports bar at the bottom of 5th street in Benicia, California, named "Bottom of the Fifth", referring to (1) the address, (2) a period in baseball, and (3) a measure of consumption of a common quantity of alcoholic beverage. In contrast, comedian Benny Hill, whose television shows included straightforward sexual gags, has been [5] jokingly called "the master of the single entendre". [edit]Etymology The expression comes from French double = "double" and entendre = "to hear". However, the English [6] formulation is a corruption of the authentic French expression double entente . Modern French uses double sens instead; the phrase double entendre has no real meaning to a native French speaker. The term "adianoeta" comes from Greek and means "unintelligible". [edit]Usage [edit]Literature The title of Damon Knight's story To Serve Man is a double entendre, it can mean "to perform a service for humanity" or "to serve a human as food". An alien cookbook with the title To Serve Man is featured in the story, implying that the aliens eat humans. Examples of sexual innuendo and double-entendre occur in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (14th century), in which the Wife of Bath's Tale is laden with double entendres. The most famous of these may be her use of the word "queynte" to describe both domestic duties (from the homonym "quaint") and genitalia ("queynte" being a root of the modern English word cunt.) The title of Sir Thomas More's 1516 fictional work Utopia is a double entendre because of the pun between two Greek-derived words that would have identical pronunciation: with his spelling, it
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means "no place" (as echoed later in Samuel Butler's later Erewhon); spelled as the rare word Eutopia, [9] it is pronounced the same by English-speaking readers, but has the meaning "good place". The poem Ozymandias by Percy Shelley published in 1818, is an example of ironic double entendre. Looking upon the shattered ruins of a colossus, the traveler reads: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! The speaker believes that the king's sole intended meaning of "despair" was that nobody could hope to equal his achievements, but the traveler seems to find another meaningthat the reader might "despair" to find that all beings are mortal, that king and peasant alike inevitably share oblivion in the sands of [10] time. This portrayal of an unintended double entendre exemplifies a case of the double entendre as the poet's figure of speech. In Homer's "The Odyssey", when Odysseus is captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus, he tells the Cyclops that his name is Outis (No-one). When Odysseus attacks the Cyclops later that night and stabs him in the eye, the Cyclops runs out of his cave, yelling to the other cyclopes that "No-one has hurt me!", which leads the other cyclopes to take no action, allowing Odysseus and his men to escape. Often, older media contain words or phrases that were innocuous at the time of publication, but have a more obscene or sexual meaning today, such as "have a gay old time" from The Flintstones ("gay" means "happy" in this context). One possibly intentional example is the character Charley Bates from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, frequently referred to as Master Bates. The word "masturbate" was in use when the book was written. For example, when signs consist of double entendres, one might read: "We stand behind every bed we sell." You might wonder if you'll see the salesman who sold you your bed waiting patiently behind it come nightfall to see if you truly enjoy your new sleep experience. Or you may just believe that the store that sold you the bed feels so strongly about their beds that they are guaranteeing their comfort. Another word for a double entendre is an amphiboly. In the bookWith Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies, S. Morris Engel relays a variety of sentences that constitute amphiboly. The word is closely related to ambiguity, which means "uncertainty of meaning in language." Click for Free Writer's Block Help E-Zine and Free E-Book When writing, you must make yourself clear and understandable for your readers. If they don't know what you are trying to say or can't grasp where you are going, they may lose interest. Hold your reader's interest. Find ways to remain unambiguous. At the same time, enjoy these double entendres from S. Morris Engel and learn from them. They are often used because of carelessness on the part of the speaker or writer who uses them. Double entendres are funny, but can rob your writing of its value if readers mistakenly take the wrong meaning from them. See if you can discern the different meanings and then read below to see what the meanings actually are. Examples of Double Entendres: 1. The ladies of the Walnut Street Mission have discarded clothes. They invite you to come and inspect them.

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2. It pays to remember your social obligations. If you don't go to other people's funerals, they won't come to yours. 3. Traffic Sign: Slow Children Crossing. 4. Druggist's Sign: We Dispense with Accuracy. 5. Police authorities are finding the solution of murders more and more difficult because the victims are unwilling to cooperate with the police. 6. Testimonial from an insurance firm: My husband and I took out a home insurance policy with your company. In less than a month our house accidentally burned down. I consider it a blessing. 7. I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows. 8. Prostitutes appeal to Pope. 9. Public Service Announcement: Our X-ray unit will give you an examination for tuberculosis and other diseases which you will receive free of charge. 10. Come to us for unwanted pregnancies. 11. Lost: Samsonite Briefcase with Eyeglasses 12. I cannot get sick pay. I have six children. Can you tell me why? 13. Church Announcement: What is hell? Come to church next Sunday and listen to our new minister! Understanding Double Entendre Meanings: See the double entendres above, and read on to discover what meanings can be gleaned from them. 1. Are you invited to come and inspect the ladies or the clothes? 2. Who will not come to the funeral? The dead or their loved ones? 3. Is the sign informing motorists of the type of children crossing there, or is the sign instructing motorists to slow down? 4. Has this druggist thrown accuracy by the wayside or does the druggist dispense his prescriptions with the utmost accuracy? 5. If the victims were murdered, no wonder they are unwilling to cooperate with the police. They're dead! 6. Does the woman believe it was a blessing that their house burned down or that they had taken out an insurance policy just in time? 7. Did the cows actually find the person, or was the person found near the cows? 8. Does the Pope like the prostitutes, or are they appealing to him and atoning for their sins?

9. Are you going to receive the exam free of charge or the diseases? 10. Should you go to these people to get rid of unwanted pregnancies (abortion), or to have sex and end up pregnant even though you didn't want to? 11. Did the briefcase wear eyeglasses, or were the eyeglasses found in the briefcase? 12. Does the person want to be told why he cannot get sick pay or does he want to be told why he ended up with six children? 13. Is the minister going to explain exactly what hell is, or is hell sitting there and listening to the new minister? I know that some of these dual meanings don't really make sense, but that doesn't mean that people don't see these ridiculous meanings within their respective sentences. The truth is that some people read things differently, and they may think exactly the opposite of whatever the true meaning of the sentence is. So be careful. Watch what you write. Re-read your work. Now that you know what double entendres are, you'll start to notice them all the time. You can see them in newspaper headlines, books, magazines, etc. Just keep your eyes open. You're sure to see more and more now that you've learned what they entail. Double Entendre A double entendre uses a word in one sense and then switches its meaning for comic effect, or simply establishes a context in which the word will have one interpretation and then uses it in another sense. Usually one of the meanings is risqu, and many of the examples here will be too, so if you are uncomfortable with that, you should probably stop reading now. (Rhetorically, double entendre uses antanaclasis, reusing the same word or sound, but changing the meaning. A double entendre may be considered a kind of a pun.) Mountains and alcohol: the higher you are, the higher you get. When one of the meanings is risqu, you make that one the punch line. Here are three examples: Dorothy Parker said, If all the young women from all the seven sisters academies were laid end to end, I wouldnt be a bit surprised. If you consider a reasonable mammal like the Elk, once a year the females go into heat, the males start rutting, and if a male can battle past the other males and get to a female, she never has a headache, but with humans, the females never go into heat, the males are always rutting, and the females find that a major headache. [A double antithesis and a double entendre.] What did Bill Gates wife learn to here horror on their wedding night? Where he got the name Micro soft. To find a double entendre, the question you must always ask yourself is, How can I misunderstand this?

How to construct a basic double entendreThe basic double entendre uses a word in one sense and then switches its meaning for comic effect. Here is how you do it: Start with a list of concept words, that is, words that are relevant to the idea you are talking about. Mark the words in your list that have multiple, relevant meanings. For each of these words, construct jokes of the form: Setup: lead people to expect one meaning. Punch line: switch to the other meaning. I hate alcohol. I cant stand drinkingI keep falling down. Revise with two things in mind: making sure the set up is long enough to implant the expectation firmly in the listeners minds, and make sure the switch in meaning comes at the very end, or as close to the end as syntactically possible. Context-setup double entendre To set up a double entendre by context, proceed as in the basic double entendre, but dont use the word in the setup. Merely create a context in which the word will be interpreted one way. Its use in the punch line will still create a jarring double meaning. A politician is asked to run, wants to sit, and is expected to lie. The double entendre comes from the group membership of run, sit, and lie. The quote comes from Churchill, though he said stand rather than run. In the land of pencils, Number 2 is Number One. Clich-setup double entendre A clich is a phrase so commonly used or so well known that people will instantly recognize it. You can use a clich to set up the double entendre. Start with a list of concept words. Where you can, find clichs using those words with a meaning not relevant to your topic. Form jokes as follows: Setup: use the clich in the usual sense. Lead the audience along with the conventional meaning. Punch line: say something that switches the meaning to one relevant to what you are talking about. Mae West: When given a choice between two evils, I typically choose the one I havent tried yet. You take the high road and Ill take the low road, and Ill get elected before you. For practice, you can just start with some clichs. Go through each of the clichs asking, What else could this word mean? Mark the clichs and words with multiple meanings. Form the joke the same way, using the clich to set up the joke and the different meaning in the punch line. You can then save these to use when you find a context in which they are relevant. Using wordplay where it doesnt contribute to some purpose just tries peoples patience.

Clich-punch-line double entendre You can also end the joke with the clich. Find the clichs for your concept words as in the Clich setup double entendre. Construct the jokes. Set up: lead them to expect one meaning by creating a context where they would normally take that meaning. Punch line: use the word in a clich where it has a different meaning. I know my computer loves me; its always going down. Spiritualan adjective meaning of no worldly value. Dangling-modifier double entendre You can get the same effect as shifting the meaning of a word by shifting the noun or verb a phrase modifies. You can work with a sentence, or simply a phrase that almost always has one meaning, but neednt have. I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, Ill never know. --Groucho Marx. So to speak. When somebody says something that could be reinterpreted as risqu, murmur So to speak, which will call everybodys attention to it without saying anything untoward yourself. Double entendre on multiple opposites You can get double entendres from words that have more than one opposite, for example Turn left here. Right here? No left. I mean, Left here? Right. It is not hard to understand the process of constructing double entendres, but it can take the eye of an editor to find the words with double meanings, and clichs, where you wish to use them, are hard to remember. But double entendres can be a delight, whether using the word twice, or set up from context, or using a clich or any other way. The fact that they are so often risqu should not be used against them. Given the blunt and crude sexual language one encounters these days, its pleasant to find some subtlety and wit in the area.

Differential gene expression and development The fate of a cell describes what it will become in the course of normal development. The fate of a particular cell can be discovered by labelling that cell and observing what structures it becomes a part of. When the fate of all cells of an embryo has been discovered, we can build a fate map, which is a diagram of that organism at an early stage of development that indicates the fate of each cell or region at a later stage of development. The developmental potential, or potency, of a cell describes the range of different cell types it CAN become. The zygote and its very early descendents are totipotent - these cells have the potential to develop into a complete organism. Totipotency is common in plants, but is uncommon in animals after the 2-4 cell stage. As development proceeds, the developmental potential of individual cells decreases until their fate is determined. The determination of different (cell fates) involves progressive restrictions in their developmental potentials. When a cell chooses a particular fate, it is said to be determined, although it still "looks" just like its undetermined neighbors. Determination implies a stable change - the fate of determined cells does not change. Differentiation follows determination, as the cell elaborates a cell-specific developmental program. Differentiation results in the presence of cell types that have clear-cut identities, such as muscle cells, nerve cells, and skin cells.