See what I did there? Stood a cliché on its head, as advised in Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, by Anne Lemott and her significant other, Neal Allen which suggests metaphors and similes. How about wolves and horses? And monkeys and donkeys?

In cold weather, my mother liked to say it was cold enough to “freeze the ass off a brass monkey,” bowdlerized for use outside the house as “freeze the ears off a grass donkey.”

Just not the same. There was also “colder than a witch’s tit,” which I dropped because it’s not very feminist or Wiccan. “Madder than a wet hen,” while popular at our house, was fairly widespread.

Mom didn’t grow up on farm, but her mother raised chickens, so “stupid as a chicken with it’s head cut off.” That may also be the source of “south end of a duck going north,” which my grandson already likes, just a week after he learned it. She also used water pumps as a girl, hence “colder than snot on a pump handle in January.[1] Also water-related was “God willing and the creek don’t rise,” which isn’t a metaphor, but does, to me, seem related.

While we’re on the subject of poultry, outsiders sometimes brought in new metaphors (or something like metaphors). Chris Durst brought us “Doesn’t have the sense that God gave geese” from his house.

Mr. Olsen, my best friend’s father and a WWII pilot, noting my lack of focus, used to compare me to “the general who got on his horse and rode off in all directions.” I assume this was a military saying.

This is mine: You can never be too thin, too rich, or have too many thumbdrives

[1] She knew a lot about being cold in the winter, as cold is defined in Portland, Oregon. Born in the 1930s, she didn’t have indoor plumbing until she married my dad in 1952; just another reason to love him.

As my family will tell you, there are some stories I repeat frequently; I know I do the same thing in this column.[1] I like to think I limit it to interesting topics. [2]

Four readers responded to my most recent item on the subject:

Jane Anderson Vercelli, Clark Smith, Christopher van der Kaay and Stephen Coquet

Rule Of Three Dubbed Triplets For Headline Fit

For purposes of this column, the Rule of Three has been renamed triplets, as it is applied to three adjectives before a person’s name. This is for technical reasons: it is easier to type, and I am now trying to write traditional headlines, which are concise and include a verb. Shorter words make that easier.[3]

Triplets Prove Mutable Across Time

Steve Coquet and I have both participated in this exercise before. Steve’s triplets:

2021: garrulous, slow-speaking and decrepit.

2026: Decrepit, sardonic and verbose

Paul’s Triplets Revealed

2021: Cheerful, optimistic and upbeat[4]

2024 (In a This And That): chubby, cherubic and cheerful.[5].

2026: plump, upbeat, chatty

2026 negative triplet: (In honor of Jane’s innovation): egotistical, inconsiderate and thoughtless. [6]

Anderson advances triplet form

Jane Anderson is the first reader to provide both a positive triplet and a negative triplet.

Positive triplet: observant, insightful, prolific writer 

Negative triplet: disorganized, absent-minded, time blind.

AI offers triplet for itself

Forwarded from Christopher van der Kaay, Ph.D.:

After reading your Rule of Three post, it was too tempting not to ask Chat GPT and it chose for itself “precise, analytical, and restrained.” Although I’d use the descriptors “glib, unoriginal, and overconfident.” My wife thinks I am “analytical, articulate, and thoughtful” (how nice of her). But I much prefer “pragmatic, goofy, and bald.”

Whatever AI is being used for search assist by Duck Duck Go describes itself as “reflective, intentional, evaluative.”

GPT5-mini: “Curious, concise, helpful”

But it can’t seem top make up its mind. Christopher van der Kaay, Ph.D. asked GPT, which responded “precise, analytical, and restrained.”

Hallucination? You be the judge.

Readers provide thoughtful triplets

Clark Smith: “zany, whip-smart maverick”

My nephew Paul: “excitable, considerate, diligent

In addition to asking AI for its triplet, Van der Kaay picked his own triplet. “I’d use the descriptors “glib, unoriginal, and overconfident.” My wife thinks I am ‘analytical, articulate, and thoughtful’ (how nice of her). But I much prefer pragmatic, goofy, and bald.”

Triplet columns propagate

Previous items on this subject:
July 11, 2021: Cheerful, Optimistic and Upbeat
April 5, 2026: The Rule of Three

Footnotes

[1] Not too often, right?

[2] And stories about myself. If it’s worth saying once, it’s worthy saying again–just not 50 times.

[3] Think FDR, DDE, JFK and LBJ if you have any idea who they were

[4] Frankly, I like this one best. It has aged well

[5] Clearly alliteration was more important then accuracy

[6] Dished out by long-past lovers. I haven’t heard these since I got married, 45 years ago. Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

And now for something completely different.

An irreversible binomial is a pair of words joined by a conjunction – usually and – that always appears in the same order. The order is ‘locked in’ due to factors such as rhythm, frequency, phonology, or conventional usage.

This meme courtesy of Nicky Mee

I was looking at my description of my former publisher, Tom Cooper. All I had was “sweet and daffy.” It nagged at me. Then I remembered: the Rule of Three, an ancient writing device that explains both “A Priest, a Minister and a Rabbi walk into a bar,” and the phrase “tall, dark and handsome.” So, I added “lanky.”

I remember when I first learned about the rule, during the 1960s, when I was an avid reader of Time Magazine, a very heavily stylized weekly newsmagazine co-founded by Yalie Henry Luce, who insisted that everyone’s name be preceded by three adjectives. I would call him “wacky, wealthy, classically-educated Henry Luce.” He also found a constant march of simple sentences boring, so, in the immortal words of parodist Wolcott Gibbs: “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind,” a perfect example of Timespeak.

I realize now that I missed a trick in the summer of 1975, when I was on the overnight desk at UPI Boston, writing the Red Sox summary for the New England radio wire. Luis Tiant never recorded an appearance without being referred to by dozens of New England radio station announcers (reading my script) as “cigar-chomping right-hander Luis Tiant.” If only I’d though of adding “Cuban.”

So, I decided that I am plump, upbeat, chatty Paul Schindler. Perhaps if I, too, had been a Yalie and not an MIT grad, I might say plump, ebullient, chatty. What three adjectives would you use for yourself? Let me know by clicking this email link, or commenting.