AS DOCTORS know only too well, as soon as you give a syndrome a name it starts popping up all over the place. So at the end of last year, when we coined the term semiopathy—the phenomenon of reading inappropriate emotions into signs—dozens of readers discovered that they were semiopathologists. And, in the best academic tradition, it’s time to create some sub-disciplines.
First come the “time-flies” signs, named after the grammar-wrenching line from Groucho Marx: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” Thus, is the sign “Crocodiles Do Not Swim Here” at the Jinja Sailing Club in Zimbabwe an announcement that they’ve decided to walk, or an…
