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Husband and Wife

|< < Prev #3237 (April 24, 2026)

Title text: Borat came out twenty years ago this year--closer to the breakup of the Soviet Union than to today--but it honestly feels like it's been even longer, somehow.

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Explanation

This is one of 68 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently by MAH BAAT. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Megan and Cueball are discussing the phrases that married couples use to refer to each other, traditionally "my husband" and "my wife". Megan thinks this sounds too traditional, though it isn't clear whether this is because of referring to a spouse possessively or using the term "husband".

Cueball, on the other hand, isn't bothered as much by this implication as by the association with 2006 film Borat. Borat, a fictional character from Kazakhstan, had a distinct, cringy way of saying "my wife", which Cueball can't get out of his head when he uses the phrase.

Megan's concern may be a little overblown. "My" isn't only used to denote possession, it's also often used to refer to a close association. For instance, "my mother", "my friend", "my teacher" or "my cleaner" almost never imply ownership. This construction is not only used for people, for example, a student or employee may refer to "my school" or "my company", and people often say "my town" to refer to the place where they live, without any concern over the speaker owning any of them.

On the other hand, Cueball has a serious problem -- it's hard to forget that earworm. The title text points out that the 20 years from the movie's release to the publication of this comic is longer than the 15 years from the dissolution of the Soviet Union to the movie (Kazakhstan was briefly the last-remaining member of the USSR). This could be considered one of the comics in which Randall makes people feel old, like this one about a Timeghost. Coincidentally enough, Cueball uses a 'cringey ghost' as a descriptor for how annoying it is - another of several strange and random ghosts that xkcd has mentioned before.

Transcript

[ Megan & Cueball are talking, standing next to each other]

Megan: I still feel a little weird saying the phrase "my husband".

Megan: It makes me feel so traditional, like a Victorian gossip.

[Megan and Cueball still standing next to each other]

Cueball: Yeah, well, my plight isn’t much better.

Megan: What do you mean?

Cueball: What’s the most salient cultural reference for the phrase "my wife"?

[In the 3rd panel, Cueball has his hands raised]

Megan: Ughhhh, true.

Cueball: Even now, after two decades, when I speak of you I hear his voice, echoing through the halls of memory like a cringey ghost.

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