Think of a given noun phrase, such as high king, meaning âa king that is highâ. Naturally, being a noun phrase consisting of the adjective high and the noun king (which is the head of the noun phrase), this second element must be pronounced more prominently than the adjective. However, we can imagine a scenario, where someone is deliberately attempting to highlight the fact that this king is actually high, as in the contrastive stress when correcting someone. To illustrate, considering the following conversation between two people:
A: Are you talking about the wise king?
B: No, no. Actually, I am talking about the HIGH king.
Now imagine we were to coin a term to describe a hobby, which involves getting high on marijuana, and then going for a hike while enjoying music through headphones. What figure of speech or pun would best describe this activity? âI went HIGHkingâ. Whether heard or read, what comes to perception can be linguistically two-fold: 1. the classic interpretation of going hiking and 2. this is a somewhat less intuitive, yet linguistically acceptable interpretation lent from the collocation âgo + adjectiveâ or in this case âgo + nounâ. After all, there are natural phrases like âgo crazyâ, âgo madâ, âgo from happy to sadâ, or in this case âgo HIGHkingâ. So the interpretation that one might allow for with a bit of stretching oneâs imagination would be going into a state of euphoria so pleasant that one feels like a king without being one.
I went HIGHking today. It was such a wonderful trip and boy did I feel like a high king.