Frazz by Jef Mallett for October 19, 2012

uncle-vocative?

I didn’t notice that he was asserting that the ‘pro’ in ‘proactive’ is the opposite of ‘anti’. Open that dictionary of yours and look up ‘paronomasia’.

the opposite of infantry is adultery.

Caulfield badly needs a private tutor.

But i don’t get how what Caulfield did is proactive (acting in advance of a future situation.) Now if he had said “I knew them, so i replaced them with ones i didn’t know.” That might have been anticipatory. Or perhaps @Alexikakos is on to something: Mallett (incorrectly imho) used proactive to just mean active.

He fixed a problem (not knowing the answer) before it became a problem (getting a poor grade). Just like I frequently change words I can’t spell into synomyms so I don’t have to hear people moan and groan about something that is irrelevant to the point.

And yes, the English language changes, and it’s annoying, but there are worse instances than active turning into proactive (like literally changing into it’s antinym)

And when did “oversight” change from missing something to missing nothing?!

I have enjoyed Frazz for a few years now, but I think I’m probably getting over Caulfield. He’s a good supporting character, but somewhat annoying as the focus of the strip.

What do you want to be that the words Caulfield wrote in were synonyms for the words that he “didn’t know”?