Analyzing Will Ferrell's "I Thought" joke

Question

I'm reading Will Ferrell's Twitter where he wrote

Just thought a thought but the thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought I thought.

Does the sentence still have the same meaning if you remove the last "I thought"?

Is this grammatical word play possible with other words?

Is there a name for this other than a play on words?

Answer 1

The best way to understand something like this is to replace each occurrence of the repeated word with either a synonym, or something that matches its part of speech:

Just came up with an idea, but the idea I came up with wasn't the idea I believed I came up with.

As you can see, removing the last "I thought" either changes the meaning, or results in a contradiction:

• Just came up with an idea, but the idea I came up with wasn't the idea I believed – inventing an idea you don't believe is quite different from misremembering what idea you invented.

• Just came up with an idea, but the idea I came up with wasn't the idea I came up with – this is a contradiction, and doesn't make a lot of sense. (Well, not that the original makes a whole lot of sense, either.)

I don't know if there's an official term for this sort of phrase. Depending on the repeated word, it could be considered a tongue-twister. For the famous buffalo example mentioned by MrHen in the comments, Wikipedia just says it's "an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs."

Answer 2

If you remove the last "I thought", you get a contradiction in

the thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought

R D Laing called this sort of thing Knots. One example is

He is devoured by his devouring fear of being devoured by her devouring desire for him to devour her.

Answer 3

If you remove the last 'I thought' you get a contradiction. Consider the central phrase, "The thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought." Replacing all instances of 'thought' with a different noun and verb we get, "The car I drive wasn't the car I drove." If we put the 'I thought' back into our car/drove example we get, "The car I drove wasn't the car I thought I drove."

This grammatical word play is possible with any words that have can be taken as multiple parts of speech, especially noun/verb. An example from a book of puzzles I have asks: "Who could make the following statement? 'We eat what we can and can what we can't.'" The answer is a farmer or a fisherman.

During a meeting at the [fictional] local diet club, the chairperson exclaimed, "We have to fast, FAST!"

I'm not aware of any official name for these kinds of wordplay.

Answer 4

Just thought a (1)[thought] but the (2)[thought I thought] wasn't the (3)[thought] I thought I (4)[thought].

In my opinion at least three or maybe four of the parts surrounded in brackets and numbered do not need to contain the word "thought".

Assuming that when he writes "I thought a thought" he means "I had a thought", and not "I contemplated a thought, then the whole thing is conveyed more clearly and more idiomatically like this:

• Just had a thought but [it] wasn't [the one] I thought [it] was.

He's basically avoiding the use of all pronouns so he can repeat the same thing.

You can get away with this because basically the verb and the object of it are the same word. You can think a thought, and the past tense of think is thought, and so you can "thought a thought".

Think of how it would sound with some other words.

• I saw a sight but the sight I saw wasn't the sight I thought I saw.

• I jumped a jump but the jump I jumped wasn't the jump I thought I jumped.

The first is alliterative with all the s-initial sounds, the second is alliterative and assonant, with all the ju-initial sounds. But the verb and the verb object aren't the same as is the case with thought.

Answer 5

This depends to a degree on your interpretation of "same meaning". Two different sentences will almost invariably have slightly different implications. Even substituting a synonym or alternate spelling can alter the meaning read into a sentence, if not the meaning written into it. "I like the colour red" is not the same as "I like the color red". One might read "I'm British and I like red", while the other might read "I'm American and I like red". That said, it's probably safe to assume most people will interpret "same meaning" as either "same intent" or "similar enough meaning".

Contrary to the other answers, I don't feel that there would necessarily be a contradiction - the more natural reading would be to assume ellipsis.

First, let's look at the original sentence and try to understand it by imagining what the thoughts might have been. Let's imagine that Will thought "apple", but thought that he thought "potato". Let's also mark the verb "thought" with "[v]":

Just thought[v] a thought[apple] but the thought[apple] I thought[v] wasn't the thought[potato] I thought[v] I thought[v].

Clear enough. Now let's write the sentence again, minus the final "I thought":

Just thought[v] a thought[apple] but the thought[apple] I thought[v] wasn't the thought[potato] I thought[v].

This sounds clumsy, and to some it will sound like a paradox: "[the thought I thought] wasn't [the thought I thought]". However, the sentence is not as paradoxical as you might think it is. Most people will read an implicit word or phrase beyond what has actually been written. This is ellipsis.

Interpreting the shortened sentence in this way is a little ambiguous. We can either recover the original sentence exactly or perhaps more naturally:

Just thought a thought but the thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought it was.

Whether you think this has the same meaning as the original sentence is up to you. Both sentences describe a situation in which Will thought "apple", but imagined that he had thought "potato".