Follow TV Tropes

Following

Playing With / Last-Second Word Swap

Go To

Basic Trope: A character goes to say a word, but quickly switches it with another one.

  • Straight: Bob tries to confess his feelings to Alice but switches the word love, to likes.
  • Exaggerated: Every word Bob plans to say is changed to something else.
  • Downplayed: Bob switches his word to a synonym of the original word.
  • Justified: What Bob was going to say to Alice would get him into big trouble, had he actually said it.
  • Inverted: Bob is about to change a word, but reverts back to the original when Alice walks by.
    • Bob's 3-year-old son swears and he tries to claim that his son was trying to say something else, but slipped because he isn't quite old enough to talk properly.
  • Subverted: Bob begins to switch to like because Alice walked by the doorway but continues to say love after she passes.
  • Double Subverted: ???
  • Parodied:
    • Bob tries to switch from saying a mildly offensive word and instead says something just as offensive or worse.
    • His entire sentence gets randomly word-swapped into a Word Salad.
    • After a bad day at work, Bob blasts the door open, and dramatic music starts playing. He rants and raves about what a terrible day he had, with enough f-bombs to make a sailor blush. However, he realizes midway through that his three children are in the room, so he starts saying "fudge" instead while his wife gives him an extremely disapproving look, as the music slowly stops.
  • Zig Zagged: Sometimes Bob switches, sometimes he doesn't.
  • Averted: Bob speaks his mind and doesn't try to censor what he says.
  • Enforced: The word is a swearword and Bob can't say it because of the rating of the show. So he says "Oh, fu...dge."
  • Lampshaded: Carol nudges Bob and comments on Bob's "Nice save."
  • Invoked: Carol quietly nudges Bob to stop him from confessing
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied:
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Deconstructed: Bob is an actor who's accepting an award at an awards show aired on broadcast TV. During his acceptance speech, he almost uses "fucking" but at the last second, he uses "fudging". Unfortunately, Moral Guardians see through this and boycott the man, which is a shame, because the family of one of the Moral Guardians was a huge fan of Bob.
  • Reconstructed: Despite the boycott from Moral Guardians, the public accepts that it was just a minced oath.
  • Played For Drama: Bob nearly lets slip to his (very jealous) wife Alice that he and Carol had se-conds when he had a business dinner with Carol.

Back to Last Second Worrrrrr...m eating contest.

Top