As a brief break from this mundane Monday morning, aforesaid alliteration is my free fast food for the day -- hopefully done without being awfully obnoxious. It's like "Peter Piper picked a peck of ..." -- you know the rest of the always-alliterative story. My mighty Merriam-Webster desktop dictionary defines it as "the repetition of initial sounds in adjacent words or syllables" -- (Twitter?) WhiteSmoke's digital dictionary disappointingly defines the verb alliterate: "use alliteration as a form of poetry".
A writer or group behind the scenes at CNBC is exceptionally eccentric, atrocious or adept at alliteration, depending on how you feel about it. Cynical "Squawk on the Street" co-anchor Mark Haines tends to expand on it in jest, just barely tolerating it, including "Commodities Corner". Then there's this morning's "Facebook Frenzy" Faber Report: some value the company at $65 billion!
Advertising apparently loses little love for alliteration -- as Angie's List, for example. "Founder" Angie Hicks appears on a full-page ad in Fast Company 3/2011, headlining "Ridiculously reliable reviews on roofers, ..." Productive products are named alliteratively, such as Fujitsu's ScanSnap S1500 scanner for documents (what I need for my proposed paperless office.) In the Fast Company 3/2011 issue on "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies", SynCardia places 20th "for giving artificial heart recipients room to roam". Brett Beach and McCollum's Madecasse is 50th "for building a bean-to-bar chocolate company ..." (making my favorite fast food!)
Advertising apparently loses little love for alliteration -- as Angie's List, for example. "Founder" Angie Hicks appears on a full-page ad in Fast Company 3/2011, headlining "Ridiculously reliable reviews on roofers, ..." Productive products are named alliteratively, such as Fujitsu's ScanSnap S1500 scanner for documents (what I need for my proposed paperless office.) In the Fast Company 3/2011 issue on "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies", SynCardia places 20th "for giving artificial heart recipients room to roam". Brett Beach and McCollum's Madecasse is 50th "for building a bean-to-bar chocolate company ..." (making my favorite fast food!)
For family fun sometime, have the children exercise their thinking with alliteration. By not resisting research, they could learn engaging English or some splendid Spanish -- a paradisiacal, parental paradox.
