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A double entendre [note 1] (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, one of which is typically obvious, and the other often conveys a message that would be too socially unacceptable, or offensive to state directly.
A double entendre is a spoken phrase that can be understood in either of two ways. The first, literal meaning is an innocent one, while the second, figurative meaning is often ironic or risqué and requires the audience to have some additional knowledge to understand the joke.
An example of this is the United States Department of Defense, which won the award three times, in 1991, 1993, and 2001. For the 1991 award, the United States Department of Defense "swept the first six places in the Doublespeak top ten" [ 26 ] for using euphemisms like "servicing the target" (bombing) and "force packages" (warplanes).
The phrase "said the actress to the bishop" is a colloquial British exclamation, offering humour by serving as a punch line that exposes an unintended double entendre. An equivalent phrase in North America is "that's what she said". [1] The versatility of such phrases, and their popularity, lead some to consider them clichéd. [2]
The point of the example is that the correct parsing of the second sentence, "fruit flies like a banana", is not the one that the reader starts to build, by assuming that "fruit" is a noun (the subject), "flies" is the main verb, and "like" as a preposition. The reader only discovers that the parsing is incorrect when it gets to the "banana".
Examples of word play include puns, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerisms, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, double entendres, and telling character names (such as in the play The Importance of Being Earnest, Ernest being a given name that sounds exactly like the adjective earnest).
It seems that someone at Zynga has been making out with the Blarney Stone since last summer, turning the much-hated and normally insipid Facebook wall posts into fun-loving blurbs of witty puns ...
Sexual content in the form of innuendo, suggestive imagery and double entendre is used as a tool in advertising. [52] Suggestive advertising is used to draw in attention, [ 53 ] by monopolizing attentional resources, and as a means of distinguishing their products from similar products which are usually advertised in the same medium (such as in ...