The Snowclones Database - The Diigo Meta page

• 03 Oct 08
  

  Djiezes Kraaijst

  snowclones language linguistics database resource

  • If Eskimos have N words for snow, X have Y words for Z

  • c. 1940s (?), as described in Geoffrey Pullum’s The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax.

     

    This is the journalistic cliché that started it all — the granddaddy bleached conditional that inspired the name “snowclone.” A collection of examples has been collated from the web here.
  • In Soviet Russia, X Ys you!
  • Originated with Yakov Smirnoff’s “In Soviet Russia, TV watches you!”, which has also come to be known as the “Russian reversal.” X and Y are placed in such a way that if they were reversed, the statement would be perfectly mundane

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