A sentence enhancer is basically a phrase tacked on to a sentence for added humor flavor. I have not yet discovered one with any practical purpose, but they do well as instant "bound memes" for those with an off-beat sense of humor. I say "bound" because like a bound morpheme, sentence enhancers have little or no meaning on their own. Please, always append them to the end of other sentences, preferably in a way that preserves the grammatical correctness of the sentence.

What's that you say? You want to know some examples of successful sentence enhancers? Well, all right. The first seven are free... after that, you gotta pay! Now, please enjoy the subtle yet complex strains of...

Still confused as to what the point of all this is? Well, there isn't one, really, but allow me to demonstrate how to use a sentence enhancer, just as soon as I finish giving you an idea of how not to use one.

  • Incorrect: "With my ass!" Attach it to the end of a sentence. The end of a sentence!
  • Incorrect: "I know, can you believe it... of justice?" Actually, that one has a certain naive charm, but that kind of grammatical weirdness should probably be used only sparingly.
  • Incorrect: "Hi, you're looking nice today... like the womb!" Incorrect when used on anybody to whom you would say vous in French, and many other people, such as your mother, your boss, and the President of Burundi. Most of these should be relegated to extremely informal communication.

  • Correct: "Oh, I just went down to the store and got a soda... in accordance with the prophecies." This is a classic use of a sentence enhancer to add drama! and significance! and soy! to a sentence. Ok, maybe not soy, but I had to take the opportunity to make an obvious nod to a more well-established meme here. Spectacularly clever or not, I pulled it off, and victory was achieved.
  • Correct: "Yeah, I was thinking I'd go to the dance this weekend, you know, so as to promote death." Often it can be effective to apply a sentence enhancer in an offhand way, as if you were going to say something that wasn't totally weird.
  • Correct: "My God, man, calm down! You're getting hysterical... like the womb!" This example, in my opinion, showcases the power of a sentence enhancer in much the same way "In America you can always find a party; in Soviet Russia, the Party can always find you!" does for "In Soviet Russia." Witness the clever pun on the fairly obscure fact that people used to believe that hysteria was caused by a woman's womb floating about her body and disrupting her other organs.

Still wondering what's so great about these things? Frankly, so am I, but nevertheless over my almost three college years, many of them have been used to great effect on more than one occasion. Go on, try some of them out.

With your ass!


And if you have any more to recommend, /msg me and I will add them, subject to my incredibly easily earned approval. The following were brought to my attention by others:

  • "...of doom!" How I could have forgotten this timeless classic I don't know. It even has its own node. Reminded, um, to me by jesuit and althorrat.
  • "...of death!" See "...of doom!"
  • "...in bed!" The old fortune cookie standby. Can be augmented with such phrases as "with monkeys." Brought to my attention by mcd.
  • "...in prison!" From Friends, via mcd.
  • "...not that there's anything wrong with that." From Seinfeld, also via mcd.
  • "...which was nice." Softlinked by some smart-ass. But of course that means it has its own node, which is nice. Or, uh, it did. It seems to be gone now.
  • "...like a fox!" It is almost impossible to imagine that this is not derived from the phrase "crazy like a fox." Submitted by gaius.
  • "...in my pants!" Submitted by donnaidh_sidhe, this is commonly heard from the mouth of JFK in the short-lived TV show Clone High.

More, more, I'm still not satisfied. Extra bonus points for original creations.

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