Let us bid this world-wearying week farewell with a superb performance from the great Steven Wright on The Tonight Show in 1982. Thanks to Wright’s Wikipedia entry, I learned a new word–albeit one I’m still not sure how to pronounce or even to use properly in a sentence. According to the article, Wright is known for his “distinctive lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, non-sequiturs, anti-humor, and one-liners with contrived situations.” Now, I can explain each of those terms (with the possible exception of ‘anti-humor’) as can most people above a certain intelligence level (I’ll pass on the obvious ). But what, pray tell, is a ‘paraprosdokian’ aside from either 1) A greek potato-filled pasty, 2) A word for somebody who acts in a way akin to Paraprosds or 3) A bunch of letters with stick-ems on their backs thrown at random onto a blackboard. In fact, the definition of the word is:

A paraprosdokian (/pærəprɒsˈdoʊkiən/), or par’hyponoian, is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists,^[such as Groucho Marx.

And so, what goes around comes around. We began the week with Groucho, and somehow Groucho has found his way back to us at week’s end, proving that all things lead back to Marxism whether you like it or find it paraprosdokian to the max.