{{short description|Sudden unexpected variation or reversal, often for a humorous purpose}} {{use mdy dates|date=June 2025}} {{other uses}} A '''''switcheroo''''' is a sudden unexpected variation or reversal,<ref name="AmericanHeritageDictionary ">{{cite book |title= The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language |edition= 3 |year= 1992 | location= Boston, Massachusetts |publisher= Houghton Mifflin |isbn= 0-395-67148-5|page=1816| editor-first = Anne H. |editor-last = Soukhanov |url=https://archive.org/details/the-american-heritage-dictionary-of-the-english-language-third-edition-1st-august-1992 |access-date=2025-06-26 | url-access =registration |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> often for a humorous purpose.<ref name="TimeMagazine">{{cite magazine |magazine= Time Magazine |page=25 |title= Woody Allen: Rabbit Running |last= Kanfer |first= Vedi S. |url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877848,00.html |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070220113829/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C877848%2C00.html |url-status= dead |archive-date= February 20, 2007 |access-date= 2010-05-24 |date= 1972-07-03}}</ref> It is colloquially used in reference to an act of intentionally or unintentionally swapping two objects.{{citation needed|date=April 2016}}
As a comedic device, this was a favorite of Woody Allen; for a time, he used so many switcheroos that friends referred to him as "Allen Woody."<ref name="TimeMagazine" /> Some of Allen's switcheroo gags include: *Carrying a sword on the street; in case of an attack it turned into a cane, so people would feel sorry for him. *Carrying a bullet in his breast pocket; he claimed someone once threw a Bible at him and the bullet saved his life.
Another example comes from the film ''The Aristocrats'', directed by Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza in 2005, wherein Wendy Liebman pulls "the old switcheroo". Whereas the joke normally is narrated as a vulgar series of actions followed by the clean punch line, Liebman narrates a very aristocratic series of actions followed by a very vulgar punch line.<ref>{{Cite AV media|author= falconicehole|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfaKld5ahfw |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211221/yfaKld5ahfw |archive-date=2021-12-21 |url-status=live|title=Aristocrats - Wendy Liebman|date=28 February 2006 |access-date=3 May 2021|via=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref>
In his book ''Gödel, Escher, Bach'', Douglas Hofstadter names one of the rules in his version of propositional calculus the '''Switcheroo Rule''', apparently in honour of an Albanian railroad engineer, name Q. Q. Switcheroo, who "worked in logic on the siding".<ref name="GEB">{{cite book | title = Gödel, Escher, Bach | url = https://archive.org/details/godelescherbach00doug | url-access = registration | last = Hofstadter | first = Douglas R. | year = 1979 | location = New York |publisher = Basic Books |page=[https://archive.org/details/godelescherbach00doug/page/187 187]| isbn = 0-465-02685-0 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> This is in reality the ''material implication''.
==See also== *Comic strip switcheroo *Bait and switch *I Said My Pajamas (and Put On My Pray'rs) *Paraprosdokian *Man bites dog *The Great Switcheroo *The Old Switcheroo *In Soviet Russia *Transpositional pun *Rickrolling
==References== <references/>
==External links== *{{IMDb title|id=0436078|title=The Aristocrats}}
Category:Narrative techniques Category:Discourse analysis Category:Sociolinguistics Category:Jokes Category:English words
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