Debriefing Bloopers

Some of my favorite bloopers come from Internet sites. There's a large proliferation of these sites, none of which shall be named. If there were intelligence reports that they're harboring WMD, the Word Cavalry would already have moved in. As it is, it's up to us to commit a little Verbicide and debrief them. It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it.

"they're congadulating this guy... "

Congadulation: To render adulation while dancing in an undulating conga line. Add liquor and dirty dancing to the conga line and it could lead to an altogether different definition.


"in a cememtary at midnight..."

i) In a perfect world, this would appear to be simply a typo. This is not a perfect world. It should, of course, be "cementary" -- the final resting place of authors who write flat, rock-like prose and poetry too heavy to take wing.

ii) Cement shoes for bad prose.


"reinterated..."

Opining Person #1: You know how Los Estadounidenses (that's us USA folks) say 'oriented', but Los Brits (that's those UK folks) say 'orientated'? Well, this is a stab at Britishizing that simple word 'inter' by making it 'interate', and then making it a repeated action by adding the Latin-derived prefix re-. Thus, we get 'reinterate: to bury again, e.g., "The kitty reinterated her poop in the litter box, but that stupid hounddog kept digging it back up."

Opining Person #2: Oh, dear me. I'm afraid it has more to do with reburying reanimated dead things. Ergo, quite aside from relatively benign hound dogs and kitty poop, we're talking about Zombie making here. That's some bad shit.


"Expalin this please..."

Respondent #1: Expalin' is the obverse of impalin'.

Respondent #2: Expalin' is removing bloody sharp objects from somebody who's likely to scream when you pull (expale).


"mastubation..."

This is believed to be a naval term peculiar to the Albanian Navy. You've heard the term "three sheets to the wind" to describe the state of being drunk? You've also perhaps heard people say "The sun is over the yardarm" to indicate that it's time to start drinking? Well, the Albanian Naval term for the latter is mast libation. Unfortunately, when the Albanians get drunk they cannot pronounce "Li." It always comes out as "U," so they say mast ubation. Over the years, they gave up trying to say mast libation at all and general usage of the term became Mastubation. Thus, we can surmise that this author must be writing a story about drunken Albanian sailors.


"soring their way to the top!!!!"

Word Idol Judge: There's nothing glaringly wrong with this. Follow the logic here. A sore is an open, festering wound. Therefore, doesn't it follow that scammers picking the bloody bones of their victims are 'soring' their way to the top? Or to the bank, as it were?


"My mother always told us girls that 'when bad folks deliberately hurt you, they always get their come uppins in the end.'"

This one gets a bit complicated. Let's summarize: Mae West = sex = immoral = spawn of the devil = 'Why dontcha come up 'n' see me sometime?' = one way trip to Hades where you are going to burn in hell.

Therefore, come up 'n' (phonically, come uppin) = trip to hell.

Since 'bad folks' are plural in the quote, the author has rightly kept subject-verb number agreement by pluralizing the term as come uppins.