I cried my ass off

Posted: February 17, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

This one was found in the Philadelphia Inquirer (but you can also hear it on YouTube replays of the speeches) regarding highlights of the Super Bowl victory party in Philadelphia. Safety CJ Gardner-Johnson, in his speech at the party, talked about how he left and went to Detroit and then came back.  He said when he left “I cried my ass off.”  This is a conflation of “cried my eyes out” (cried very hard) and “played/worked my ass off” (played/worked very hard). Here is the article:

https://www.inquirer.com/eagles/eagles-super-bowl-parade-highlights-jalen-hurts-motivation-brandon-graham-return-20250214.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=ios&utm_campaign=app_ios_article_share&utm_content=S7JCURGOBFAVHE27Y3TNKBAIV4

Many thanks to Linda Bernstein for spotting this beauty and sending it in!

Meshing on all cylinders

Posted: December 6, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The coach of the football team, the Philadelphia Eagles, was asked about the team’s collapse last year:

“Last year is over. We don’t care about last year,” Sirianni said on Sunday. “We learned what we needed to learn from last year and what we needed to do off of that. This year, it’s a different group of guys. This is a different team that’s gelling and meshing on all cylinders right now. With that being said, you are only as good as your last game. We’ve got a big game coming up this weekend.” Here is the link to the entire interview:

Nick Sirianni deserves his share of credit for Eagles’ turnaround

This is a mashup of “meshing with (someone)” (working well together) and “hitting on all cylinders” (performing at maximum efficiency). Both idioms describe working together and the malaphor could thus be a congruent conflation. Props to Linda Bernstein for spotting this one in the Philadelphia Inquirer and sending it in!

He pulls those hat tricks out of the bag

Posted: July 10, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments
This awesome conflation was uttered by Lane Johnson, Philadelphia Eagles right tackle, talking about his quarterback Carson Wentz.  A lot is going on in this malaphor.  “A bag of tricks” (skills one is able to use) and “pull a trick (on someone)” (to carry out a trick) are both in the mix, as well as “pull a rabbit out of the hat” (to do something that is seemingly impossible), the latter which is probably what the speaker was looking for.  The beauty of this one is that he adds “hat trick” (same player scores three goals in a hockey game), applying a hockey term to football.  Here is the link to this mash up:
https://theeagleswire.usatoday.com/2018/06/25/eagles-qb-carson-wentz-ranked-no-3-on-nfl-networks-top-100/

A big thanks to Jim Kozlowski for spotting this one and sending it in.  A classic for sure.