A Skill Dangler

This one really got stuck in my head. I’m not sure if I overheard the phrase a skilled angler in a conversation where people were using the phrase without joking, or if I heard it in an audiobook. Either way, my mind fixated on that hidden, unintended double meaning immediately.

These aren’t quite mondegreens, but oronyms—phrases or words that sound identical or very similar to other phrases or words.

I don’t know if I ever truly misheard euthanasia as youth in Asia, but I certainly heard that used as a pun during the 80s. Similarly, four candles can be heard as fork handles, or vice versa; and that’s tough/that stuff is another common oronym.

There’s one that may be a lot more familiar to you. If you hear ice cream under the right circumstances, it can sound like I scream, or maybe eye scream. Is it the stuff he knows or the stuffy nose we’re talking about here?

A skilled dangler might be a lot of things, but you can bet they’re really proficient at dangling. That’s not what this phrase is, though: it’s a skill dangler.

We’re clearly talking about someone who dangles skills, whatever that means. Dangling is simple enough: you put something out there and wiggle it around, sort of like a worm at the end of a fishhook. Incidentally, fishhooks are also called angles. Skilled anglers are good at using fishhooks.

Skill danglers, by contrast, are good at tempting you with their skills. They’re trying to bait you by putting them out there in a fashion that makes you believe you can just walk right up and snatch them.

Duolingo is a skill dangler. They make it seem as though you can sign up and be speaking Portuguese fluently after a few gamified months, but it takes years of dedicated practice and a whole lot more effort to learn to communicate effectively in another language.

BJJ schools are skill danglers, too. We have to show folks who they might become, but we can’t show them who you’re going to become—that’s up to you. So, we often highlight success stories: so-and-so is no longer depressed and gloomy now that they’re training regularly, for instance.

If you want to learn a skill, you have to put in the hard work, and it pays to keep that in mind whenever you run into a skill dangler.