Language Log: An avalanchlet of snowclones
Now that we've revisited the wonderful world of snowclones (here, here, and here), they seem to be everywhere. Here are three more that have recently come to my attention: the N that is N (the abomination that is Jar Jar Binks), from Aaron Dinkin in e-mail (19 May); one man's X is another man's Y (one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter), from Rachel Shuttlesworth on the American Dialect Society mailing list (20 May); and color me X (color me surprised), which I was reminded of this morning when I ran across references to Color Me Arnold (a coloring book of sorts, aimed at Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governator of my state).

First comment: the line between clichés, some of which can have open slots (the wonderful world of X, as in the wonderful world of snowclones above), and the somewhat more complex classic snowclones, like the X have N words for Y (which gave the genus its name), is not at all clear. Probably it's like the line between idioms and constructions: there are pretty clear examples at the extremes (the idiom by and large, the construction Subject Auxiliary Inversion), but a range of intermediate types, with varying degrees and kinds of freedom as to what can fill the slots in the pattern and with varying degrees of semantic and pragmatic specialization.
As for the wonderful world of X, besides the very familiar X = Disney, Google's 600,000 raw web hits for "the wonderful world of" include, in no particular order, the following fillers for X: border collies, insects, trees, Linux 2.2, Linux 2.6, the manatee, Calli And Graphy, renewal energy, coins, Paso Fino horses, weather, animation, Larry Carlson, poodles, wine, Narnia. There's one open slot, and the expressions are semantically and pragmatically transparent. It's just that wonderful and world collocate much more often than the other (non-alliterative) possibilities: 63,900 hits for amazing world (roughly one-tenth of the wonderful world count), 3,480 for marvelous world, 1,140 for astounding world, and a mere 617 for wonderful universe.

Contrast this simple collocational pattern with Geoff Pullum's characterization of the snowclone as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers."

Second comment: an update on the once a X, always a X snowclone. ...

Third comment: Barry Popik (ADS-L, 18 May) adds an entry to the X is the new Y inventory: Chocolate is the new black (which he first observed at a Godiva chocolate store). It's not entirely clear to me from the links that Popik supplies, but I think that the intention is to convey that chocolate is an affordable luxury, like the famous little black dress. In any case, X is the new Y was one of the first snowclones to come to our attention here at Language Log Plaza, back when the furniture was still being installed in our gleaming office tower.

...Finally, the example color me X 'I am X'. Googling for this one requires sorting through names of coloring books and straightforward instructions to "color me green/black/etc." But there's plenty of gold left, with X = surprised, impressed, jealous, sensitive, beautiful, confused, underwhelmed,... There are plenty of song titles, too: Color Me X, with X = Badd (Young, Gifted & Badd), Blind (Extreme), Gone (Rhonda Hampton), Impressed (The Replacements), for example. And, of course, the Streisand song, and album, Color Me Barbra (1966).
There are plenty of examples with other object pronouns: color her angry, color him [designer Tibor Kalman] a provacateur, color them [Nokia] booming, color them confident. No doubt plenty of non-pronominal examples can be found as well.
The ultimate source is surely instructions in coloring books, involving a stretch from things like "color the pig pink" to things like "color me happy". oh. cool. At some point, the expression became fashionable (and therefore annoying), but I'm not quite sure what the precipitating events were.

nice article (~ blog post)