Dictionarily Speaking

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CYNIC'S DICTIONARY

DEFINITIONS FOR PARENTS

NEW WORDS

DEFINING POLITICS

DOUBLESPEAK

DE-VERBALIZED

ANAGRAMS

DEFINITIONS FROM THE CYNIC'S DICTIONARY

AUTHOR: A writer with connections in the publishing industry.

BOSS: A personal dictator appointed to those of us fortunate enough to live in free societies.

CHILDHOOD: The rapidly shrinking interval between infancy and first arrest on a drug or weapons charge.

DENIAL: How an optimist keeps from becoming a pessimist.

EXPERIENCE: In the working world, something you can't get unless you've already got it, in which case you probably don't want any more of it.

FITNESS: Salvation through perspiration.

GOURMET: A food fetishist.

HOOKER: A working woman commonly despised by people who sell themselves for even less.

IDEOLOGUE: Generally an obscure humorless zealot who finds fulfillment by spouting the ideas of famous humorless zealots.

JEANS: Lower half of the international uniform of youth, the upper half being the zits.

KLEPTOMANIAC: A thief with breeding.

LABORATORY ANIMALS: Furry foot soldiers drafted in the name of science. Some die nobly in the battle to eradicate cancer; others give their lives so that we might produce a peach-scented dandruff shampoo.

MARTIAL ARTS: A family of Asiatic self-defense disciplines consisting largely of sweeping ornamental gestures of the arms and legs; amusing to look at but disappointingly ineffective when one's opponent is armed with a semi-automatic.

NEIGHBORS: The strangers who live next door.

ORGASM: The punchline some women just don't get, generally because their mates have a tendency to rush through the joke.

PARASITE: A base creature that extracts a living from the lives of others, like a tapeworm or a biographer.

QUAGMIRE: Any situation more easily entered into than exited from; e.g., a guerrilla war, a bad marriage or a conversation with an insurance salesman.

REDNECK: Popular term for a rustic male, but rarely employed when addressing one in person.

SMILE: To expose a portion of one's skeleton as a gesture of goodwill toward a fellow human.

TRAILER PARKS: Latter-day gypsy camps scattered throughout the vast American hinterland; humble places of abode where hope dies young and tornadoes gravitate like flies to roadkill.

UNWED MOTHER: One who helps perpetuate the genes of an unwed father, without the latter's talent for becoming invisible at will.

VOTING: The right of our citizens to do as they please behind a curtain, as long as they do it alone.

WHITE SUPREMACISTS: The most convincing argument against the theory of white racial superiority.

X-RAY: A diagnostic tool used to detect existing cancerous growths and create new ones for future examinations to reveal.

Y-CHROMOSOME: A line of genes designed for men only; the cause of virility, war, baldness, hockey, sex crimes, clever inventions and a disinclination to ask for directions when lost.

ZOO: A pleasant and instructive wildlife park, lately denounced for depriving animals of their right to starve or be eaten alive in their natural habitats.

ADULT: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.

BEAUTY PARLOR: A place where women curl up and dye.

CANNIBAL: Someone who is fed up with people.

COMMITTEE: A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.

DUST: Mud with the juice squeezed out.

EGOTIST: Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.

GOSSIP: A person who will never tell a lie if the truth will do more damage.

HANDKERCHIEF: Cold Storage.

INFLATION: Cutting money in half without damaging the paper.

MYTH: A female moth.

MOSQUITO: An insect that makes you like flies better.

FLASHLIGHT: A case for holding dead batteries.

LOTTERY: A tax on people who are bad at math.

PURITANISM: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.

CONSCIOUSNESS: that annoying time between naps.

REDUNDANCY: Criminal Lawyer

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DEFINITIONS FOR PARENTS

AMNESIA: Condition that enables a woman, who has gone through labor, to have sex again.

DUMBWAITER: One who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.

FAMILY PLANNING: The art of spacing your children the proper distance apart to keep you on the brink of financial disaster.

FULL NAME: What you call your child when you're angry with him.

GRANDPARENTS: The people who think your children are wonderful even though they're sure you're not raising them right.

INDEPENDENT: How we want our children to be as long as they do everything we say.

OW: The first word spoken by children with older siblings.

PRENATAL: When your life was still somewhat your own.

PUDDLE: A small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry shoes into it.

SHOW-OFF: A child who is more talented than yours.

STERILIZE: What you do to your first baby's pacifier by boiling it and to your last baby's pacifier by blowing on it.

TOP BUNK: Where you should never put a child wearing Superman jammies.

VERBAL: Able to whine in words.

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NEW WORDS

GINERATION: Inherited alcoholism

ELFORTLESS: Little people with no garrison

SISPENDED: When your female sibling is hung up

INTERLUBE: The time between oil

COUPERAGE: Anger during a government overthrow.

PERVARICATION: Lies told by sex offenders to cover up.

PUTZCH: An insurrection by the clumsy.

LU GOO GAI PAN: a somber Chinese dish that produces unexpected hilarity.

CONPUTER: Device used by prisoners to calculate their escape.

MORF: Demand by audiences for Encores of the work of composer, Carl Orff.

INTERNAT: A bug that slows up the orderly transfer of information.

THE RAPY: What you have to take, when you get the sicky.

WEEPON: A device for asserting your will through minimal threat.

MER CHANT: Plaintive mantra of the telemarketer.

SUTOPIA: Lawyers paradise.

LANGAUGE: A measure of the effectiveness of words.

FOREPLOY: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of obtaining sex.

FORTISSIMOE: The musical moment produced when someone serially slaps the faces of the first-violin section.

TATYR: A lecherous Mr. Potato Head.

DOLTERGEIST: A spirit that decides to haunt someplace stupid, such as your septic tank.

GIRAFFITI: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high, such as the famous "Surrender Dorothy" on the Beltway overpass.

SARCHASM: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it.

CONRATEMPS: The resentment permanent workers feel toward the fill-in workers.

WHITETATER: a political hot potato.

IMPOTIENCE: Eager anticipation by men awaiting their Viagra prescription.

AUTO-DA-FEH: The extermination of heretics via drowning in a vat of pus.

STUPFATHER: Woody Allen.

REINTARNATION: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

DIOS: The one true operating system.

INOCULATTE: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

HIPATITIS: Terminal coolness.

WRITER'S TRAMP: A woman who practices poetic licentiousness.

TATERFAMILIAS: The head of the Potato Head family.

GUILLOZINE: A magazine for executioners.

OSTEOPORNOSIS: A degenerate disease.

ADULATERY: Cheating on your wife with a much younger woman who holds you in awe.

SUCKOTASH: A dish consisting of corn, lima beans and tofu.

EMASCULATHE: A tool for castration.

BURGLESQUE: A poorly planned break-in. (See: Watergate)

KARMAGEDDON: It's 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.

GENITALIAR: an image-Enhancing object that can be carried in a man's front pocket.

GLIBIDO: All talk and no action.

ANTIFUN GAL: A prude.

VASEBALL: A game of catch played by children in the living room.

EUNOUCH: The pain of castration.

HINDKERCHIEf: Really expensive toilet paper; toilet paper at Buckingham palace.

DEIFENESTRATION: To throw all talk of God out the window.

HOZONE: The area around 14th street.

ACME: A generic skin disease.

HINDPRINT: Indentation made by a couch potato.

INTAXICATION: Euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

DOPELER EFFECT: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

COITERIE: A very VERY close-knit group.

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DEFINING POLITICS

A little boy asks his father to explain what politics is. The father says to him, "Well, son, it's a little complicated, but let me explain it in terms of our family. In our country, we have an economic system called Capitalism. In our family, I'm the one who brings in the money, so let's call me Capitalism. Your mother takes care of the administration of the household, so she represents the Government. We'll call you The People, and we'll call Nanny the Working Class, because she works for us. And your baby brother-we can consider him as The Future. Now, you think about that, and we'll discuss it later."

That night, the little boy is awakened by his little brother, and he discovers the baby has a diaper so badly soiled that he can't change it. He goes to get his mother, but she is sound asleep, so he goes to the Nanny's room. He finds the door locked. When he peeks into the keyhole, he sees his father in bed with Nanny.

The next evening, his father asks him what he thinks about the explanation of politics.

"I think I understand how politics works," says the boy. "While Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is asleep, the People don't know what to do, and the Future is in Deep Shit."

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DOUBLESPEAK

A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor recorded the following on the patient's chart: "Patient failed to fulfill his wellness potential."

The letter from the Air Force colonel in charge of safety said that rocket boosters weighing more than 300,000 pounds "have an explosive force upon surface impact that is sufficient to exceed the accepted overpressure threshold of physiological damage for exposed personnel." In other words, if a 300,000-pound booster rocket falls on someone, he or she is not likely to survive.

A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti-personnel devices." You probably call them bombs.

At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status." That is, they were fired.

The description on the package of Stouffer's Veal Tortellini with Tomato Sauce says it contains "exquisite egg pasta." The list of ingredients, however, includes "cooked noodle product."

The Minnesota Board of Education voted to consider requiring all students to do some "volunteer work" as a prerequisite to high school graduation.

Senator Orrin Hatch said that "capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life."

According to the tax bill signed by President Reagan on December 22, 1987, Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara run a "family farm." Their "farm" has 25,000 employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year. But as a "family farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million a year.

Scott L. Pickard, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, calls them "ground-mounted confirmatory route markers." You probably call them road signs, but then you don't work in a government agency.

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DE-VERBALIZED

If lawyers can be disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that...

Electricians can be delighted,
musicians denoted,
cowboys deranged,
models deposed,
laundry workers could decrease,
eventually becoming depressed and depleted,
bedmakers would be debunked,
baseball players will be debased,
landscapers will be deflowered,
bulldozer operators will be degraded,
organ donors will be delivered,
software engineers will be detested,
garment workers will be debriefed,
and song writers will eventually decompose.

On a more positive note, politicians could be devoted.

Now I wonder if…

A flirt can be decoyed
a clerk defiled
a newly married woman dismissed
when Mickey retired from baseball, was his team dismantled
you lose your Grateful Dead ticket, you are disconcerted
a guy from Copenhagen loses citizenship, he is disdained
a pig loses his voice, he's disgruntled
they kick you out of the club, you're dismembered
you cut your hair, you're distressed

As for me, I can get into my Honda again, so I'm not derided-and since I had no Winter Olympic sledding aspirations, I wouldn't care if I were deluged...(and fortunately, my recent accident didn't involve amputation, so I haven't been defeated)....

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ANAGRAMS
Anagrams, as we all know, are words or phrases made by transposing or rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. Here are some great ones:

Dormitory = Dirty Room

Evangelist = Evil's Agent

Santa = Satan

Desperation = A Rope Ends It

The Morse Code = Here Come Dots

Slot Machines = Cash Lost in 'em

Animosity = Is No Amity

Snooze Alarms = Alas! No More Z's

Semolina = Is No Meal

The Public Art Galleries = Large Picture Halls, I Bet

A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place

Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one

Contradiction = Accord not in it

POLITICIANS:

George Herbert Walker Bush = Huge Berserk Rebel Warthog

George Bush = He bugs Gore

Ronald Reagan = A darn long era

Leroy Newton Gingrich = Yon Right-winger Clone

Margaret Thatcher = That great charmer

The Conservative Party = Teacher in vast poverty

FROM NEIL ARMSTRONG:

Quote: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

Anagram: A thin man makes a large stride; left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!

FROM HAMLET BY SHAKESPEARE:

Quote: "To be or not to be; that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

Anagram: In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

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