 As we learned from Professor Betriman's figurative language video, words can convey both literal and figurative meanings. When I say, I held the door, it means I was literally holding onto a door to keep it open for someone. When I say, I held my breath, that doesn't mean I'm holding my breath in my hands. I've simply stopped breathing for a moment. Things get confusing and interesting when a word suddenly switches between two different meanings in the same Consider this example from Elanus Morissette's song, Head over Feet, in which the speaker describes a person whom she adores. You are the bearer of unconditional things. You held your breath and the door for me. In the last line of the quotation, Morissette asks your listeners to quickly switch between two different meanings of the same word, held within the same sentence. This literary device is called a zugma from the ancient Greek and Latin words for yoking together. As this word origin suggests, zugmas connect two different meanings of the same word together, setting them sign by sign to surprise, delight, or confuse audiences. Zuga is a funny sounding word and it's similar to another funny sounding word, antinaclases, which describes clever word play in which the same word is repeated twice with different meanings. When I say time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. I'm using antinaclases. In the first sentence, flies is a verb, time flies. In the second sentence, it's a noun, fruit flies, they like bananas. This type of literary device differs from Morissette's zugma because with zugmas the word that's changing meaning occurs only once in a line. For this reason, zugmas often make greater demands upon a listener who must work a bit harder to reconcile the first meaning of the word with the second meaning. In head over feet, once we figured out the zugma, we can see how its two elements complement each other. The person she describes is both passionate, he holds his breath in her presence, and a gentleman, he holds the door. But zugmas can also create tension between the two meanings for comedic or dramatic effect. A good example of this kind of zugma occurs in Tim O'Brien's short story, The Things They Carried. The story revolves around a group of soldiers in the Vietnam War who struggle to process the death of a member of their troop, a man named Ted Lavender. One of the peculiar features of this story is that it's told in a maddeningly repetitive way. The narrator will often interrupt the narrative to deliver exhaustive lists of the weapons, communication devices, articles of clothing, and other things that each soldier carries on their missions, along with the precise weight of each object. These lists occur so often in the story that first-time readers often struggle to find anything in it that looks like a plot. Mercifully, this mania for listing begins to change about a quarter of the way through the story, and this shift is marked by an intriguing zugma. Here's the passage. As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45 caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded. He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men. The first six elements that Jimmy Cross carries gives you a sense of the crazy repetition in the story, but something strange happens in the last sentence. Clearly Cross does not carry responsibility in the same way that he carries a strobe light, and for this reason the final sentence can be understood as a zugma. So what are we to do with this literary device? O'Brien's narrator is asking us here not only to recognize the different uses of the term carry, but also to consider how these different kinds of carrying are related to one another. When we try to answer this question, O'Brien's story begins to get interesting, as the things that the soldiers carry begin to change from physical objects into immaterial things, and when they do, this change is often represented through zugmas. Here's an example of what I mean. They all carried fragmentation grenades 14 ounces each. They all carried at least one M18 colored smoke grenade 24 ounces. Some carried CS or tear gas grenades. Some carried white phosphorus grenades. They carried all that they could bear and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried. Because they cannot make sense of Ted Lavender's death or free themselves of the guilt and fear that stems from it, they frantically look for things in the world that they can control, for things they can carry that have a measurable weight. O'Brien's many zugmas in the story call our attention to this coping mechanism, showing us how his soldiers yoke together their weapons and their grief, their armor and their fear during the terrible conditions of war.