Friday, March 02, 2007
Pinched from an educated person
Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. The winners are:
Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Negligent (adj.) describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavoured mouthwash.
Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners:
Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Giraffiti (n):Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.
Karmageddon (n): its like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seemsmarter when they come at you rapidly.
Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
Caterpallor (n.): The colour you turn after m,finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.
Do you have any of your own neologisms?
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature prime English beef.
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you‚re on vacation in another city and Sex in the City comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot oil.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
Oh, Jason, take me! she panted, her breasts heaving like a Uni student on $1-a-beer night.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
