Re: weekend competition

jinhyun <jinhyunshyam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi, the competition is to come up with sentences which seem wrong or
unidiomatic in isolation but make sense when fitted into a context.
Here's an example -- not a great one, but it illustrates my meaning.
Sentence:"The parents locked her daughter up for the weekend"
Context:
Emily is hopping mad at Aunt Fannie for what happened to her
daughter,
Rita (all of six years old) at her place. Apparently, Emily had left
Rita at Aunt Fannie's
where some kids were having a party. But the parents were there too.
Apparently, Rita acted up and -- guess what! The parents locked her
daughter up for the weekend. Apparently, in the upstairs bedroom. [It
had an attached bathroom and meals can be served by a dumbwaiter] Who
gave them the right?!

It'll be interesting as well as challenging. Good luck to you all!

I know what's not idiomatic -- nobody's been called "Aunt Fanny" in a
hundred, maybe 150 years.

Weekend house-parties are also long gone.

I don't even want to go into the bit about the kids and the parents and
having a party at someone else's house -- just too weird. Besides them
locking up an unrelated six-year-old in a strange room in a strange
house for a long period of time. I think we can go for "wrong" here, not
"unidiomatic."
--
Onward and upward -- Donna Richoux
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: weekend competition
    ... unidiomatic in isolation but make sense when fitted into a context. ... Sentence:"The parents locked her daughter up for the weekend" ... Emily is hopping mad at Aunt Fannie for what happened to her ... Rita at her place. ...
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  • weekend competition
    ... unidiomatic in isolation but make sense when fitted into a context. ... Sentence:"The parents locked her daughter up for the weekend" ... Emily is hopping mad at Aunt Fannie for what happened to her ... Rita at her place. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: weekend competition
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