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Friday, May 23, 2008

Trading in My Webster's...

...for a new kind of dictionary.

I first came across many of these twisted terms at Fiction Scribe http://www.fictionscribe.com/category/writing-humor/ under their "Wordplay" entry, and they made me laugh, so I sought out more. But their origin is from The Washington Post's "Style Invitational"--a weekly contest that asks readers to do a variety of clever literary things. The rules of this particularly popular contest involve taking any dictionary word and altering it by adding, subtracting or changing just one letter, and then supplying a new definition. Here's a sampling of terms I pieced together from multiple sources:

Foreploy: (n) any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of obtaining sex.

Doltergeist: (n) a spirit that decides to haunt someplace stupid, such as your septic tank.

Glibido: (v) all talk and no action. (They claim verb here, but I might argue it's a noun in some cases. :)

Reintarnation: (n) coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Decafalon: (n) the grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you. (Hilarious! And I had to include it, even though they changed 2 letters instead of one...)

Giraffiti: (n) vandalism spray-painted very, very high, such as the famous “Surrender Dorothy” on the Beltway overpass.

Sarchasm: (n) the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn’t get it.

Inoculatte: (v) to take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis: (n) terminal coolness.

Osteopornosis: (n) a degenerate disease.

Karmageddon: (n) It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these like really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like a serious bummer.

Deifenestration: (n) to throw all talk of God out the window.

Acme: (n) a generic skin disease, or: the *best* skin disease.

Arachnoleptic fit: (n): the frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web. (Also taking some extra-letter liberties here.)

Beelzebug: (n) Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Dopeler effect: (n) the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

There were more, but these were the ones I especially liked, although I can't seem to narrow them down to one favorite. I mean, c'mon: "Sarchasm"?! Who thought of that? And "Inoculatte"--ha!

So, which ones did you like? And, does anyone else need a cup of coffee to go? I'm getting some...

4 comments:

L.A. Mitchell said...

These are great. My favorite new term, courtesy of SBTB is "photobomber". These are those annoying people who pop up and ruin an otherwise perfect photo by making a stupid face or mooning the camera.

Anonymous said...

I don't know why, but reintarnation really cracked me up. I don't know if that means I have a nasty sense of humor or if I've just been reintarnated.

Nadine said...

These are hilarious! I laughed out loud at the breakfast table... honestly, I'm in awe of people who are good with word play.

K.M. Saint James said...

Okay, the reintarnation gets me. I so have cousins that this definition would apply to. Yep, definitely more fun than the average dictionary.