So John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats does this thing in some of his lyrics where he’ll start a sentence out with a verb as though it’s an imperative, but it’s from a first-person POV. There’s a lot of examples but the song “Counterfeit Florida Plates” is the one that comes to mind first, for me. Is there a technical term for what he’s doing here?

EDIT: changed wording to be less ambiguous

  • GroteStreet 🦘English
    2·
    10 months ago

    Coming off of this discussion, what you have there might be an extreme version of diazeugma, one with an implicit subject.

    Either way, I learnt something new today - zeugma. So thank you :)

    Edit: I just realised… please, no juvenile jokes about “sugma” in this thread, thank you.