Witz¶

witz_metaphor · word · catalogued

Find the likeness between two things far enough apart that no one has yet put them together, and make the likeness carry the sentence.

Provenance¶

Source: Jean Paul, Vorschule der Ästhetik (1804), on Witz as the disguised priest who marries every pair
Attribution: primary — a named author, work and year this catalogue stands behind
Checkability: none — no computable acceptance criterion exists
Attested: reconstruction — the rule is inferred from practice, not stated by anyone

Details¶

Kind: constructive
Languages: en
Requires: tokens
Deterministic: no
In other languages: Witz (de), Esprit (fr)

Notes¶

Catalogued because it is the step Ideenwürfeln stops short of, and because saying where the mechanisable part ends is more useful than pretending it does not. No computable acceptance criterion: whether a likeness is found is the judgement the whole procedure exists to provoke.

Prompt hint¶

Take two things nobody would pair and write the sentence that makes them one.

Why this has no checker¶

This procedure has no computable acceptance criterion, so it will never be implemented. It is catalogued because the form belongs in an honest survey of the field, and denckring status counts it separately rather than reporting a gap that cannot close.