benhall.1 wrote:
I've never heard of anyone sniggering at The Lord of the Rings. I suspect it's that the plural renders it unambiguous.
Or it's like the difference between coriander and coriander.
For me, the plural is immaterial; it just indicates that the Lord of the Rings rules them all, if you will. Sorry to be getting gnarly, but you see the possibilities.
DrPhill wrote:
I never thought of Tolkien's theme as smut-positive, and I will now try to forget that suggestion.
Oh, have I created a monster? You're welcome.
Honestly, though, I would think that of all demographics that ought to have gone there first, it should have been yours, not mine, wherein "ring" conventionally lacks any scatological meaning whatsoever. Frankly, I'm surprised. Call it a fresh perspective if you like, but you have to admit the working material's been there for you all along. Me, I'm just an outsider who happened to walk by.
This might be a perfect illustration of the Japanese adage, "Living at the base of a lighthouse" (
tōdai moto kurashi); as the base is the darkest, so it is that it's hard to see what's closest to home.
Here's how I see it: When you give a word multiple meanings, all those meanings are available at once, to greater and lesser degrees of success. IOW, even though context determines conventional meaning, convention does not make meaning 100% ironclad (and my perspective should be proof enough of that). Of course this potential for ambiguity is one of the bases on which we build jokes.