Zeugmata

A zeugma is a figure of speech when a single word is used in two parts of a sentence, but must be understood differently in relation to each.

Examples

English

• Ask a medieval peasant where America was and you'd get a blank look. Or, worse still, the plague.
  • Philomena Cunk (played by Diane Morgan) in "The Renaissance Will Not Be Televised" (S1:E3 of "Cunk on Earth")

• We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.
  • Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Thomas Jefferson

• My blood sugar fell dramatically and so did I.
  • Elaine Stritch in "Elaine Stritch at Liberty"

• It's like an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister" with no Sir Humphrey, no Sir Bernard and no laughter.
  • Stephen Parkinson, Baron Parkinson of Whitley Bay, speaking at the Cambridge Union after the resignation of Simon Case and Sue Gray

• The iconoclast Henry Sherfield in 1630 broke not only a window depicting God the Father in St Edmund's, Salisbury, but also his own leg while standing on a pew to do it.
  • Keith Thomas in "Religion and the Decline of Magic" (p. 113)

• Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton takes the oath and his seat in the Upper House after his bombshell return as Foreign Secretary in the reshuffle.
  • James Tapsfield in the Daily Mail

• When all the clowns that you have commissioned have died in battle or in vain.
  • Bob Dylan in Queen Jane Approximately

• [Ed Davey should] clear his diary, clear his desk, and clear off.
  • Lee Anderson

• He himself fled back to France, alcoholism, tawdry affairs and disillusionment.
  • Linda Colley in "Britons"

• ...was crucified, dead and buried...
  • Apostles' Creed

• History is now and England.
  • T. S. Eliot in "Little Gidding"

• A good sermon should be about God and about eight minutes long.

• He left the room with neither his hat nor his dignity.

• She made no reply, up her mind, and a dash for the door.

• The arms race was finished by the Dreadnought and by 1914.

• You may leave with an improved knowledge of coastal defences and an ice cream.

• You leave with my best wishes and a fine collection of zeugmata.

Latin

• They tear your possessions to pieces, and my heart.
  • Ovid in "The Heroides" (I.90)

• deposito pariter cum veste timore
  • Ovid in "The Heroides" (XVIII.57)

• onerat Seianum, saevitiam, superbiam, spes eius
  • Tacitus in "Annals" (IV)