Parliamentary Terms

By David Mezzera, PRP

Are you familiar with this old joke? “I can’t seem to get rid of this parliamentary cold . . . sometimes the eyes have it and sometimes the nose!” This joke only works because of the use of homophones in the English language . In this case, the word “eyes” is spelled differently but has the same sound as the parliamentary term “ayes,” as does “nose” and “noes . ”

To have some fun with parliamentary terms, see if you can think up other words common in the English language that have a homophone (i .e . a different spelling but the same sound) with a parliamentary word or part of a parliamentary term . The list on page 37 has 25+ such homophonic terms which may be found in the Index to the 12th edition of RONR (as an example: “bored” = “board”) . See if you can come up with at least ten more words off the top of your head which are spelled differently but have the same sound as parliamentary terms . If you can, take a bough (bow)!

Answers on page 37.