4/18/2008

Vocabulary Builder VII


That Wizard of Wordage, Skunkfeathers is back with another eclectic confabulation designed to educate and confuse.

Which brings into question just how "lucky" the number seven truly is, but I digress.
So while Igor (pronounced "Eye-gor") points out the source from whenst vocabulary builders are hatched to become verbiage omelettes, let's get on with further slaughterage of the Americanized English lexicon:

Digress:
- wander really far afield from the original point, if there ever really was one to stick to
- change the color of your gress
- a gress that became road kill on the syntax super spellcheck

Aquifer:
- a route water prefers
- mermaid poon
- rock or soil able to transfer water

Diva:
- Italian meaning "dump"
- Italian meaning "prima donna"
- Italian meaning "taka the submarine down, and mama mia, close the hatches this time"

Earthenware:
- environmentally-friendly thong (may not be for the eyes, tho')
- pottery
- question from a German-speaking alien

Groats:
- something disgusting
- farm animals that butt folks from behind
- crushed grain

Eclectic:
- transmitting electricity through a pastry
- an electrifying evangelical
- deriving ideas from varied sources

Reckon:
- the whole language, one word at a time...
- USMC meaning "the git-out-and-find-'em fellers"
- to calculate

Ignis fatuus:
- Latin meaning "gentlemen, start your fat asses and get to work"
- Latin meaning "a fart lighter"
- Latin meaning "a foolish fire"

Factorage:
- pissed off fractions
- the chronology of factor
- pay for a business agent that doesn't include graft, embezzlement, cooking the books, etc.

Desertification:
- various categories of desertion
- making ice cream
- process of making a desert

Holstein:
- Bavarian beer mug
- a milk cow
- Bavarian beer mug that looks like a milk cow

Kidderminster:
- cathedral for pranksters
- government agency in charge of officially-sanctioned humor (ie., Baghdad Bob)
- reversible carpet

Pith:
- as in "oh...."
- physical strength
- urinating while making a "th" sound

Lollygag:
- loiter
- cloning around
- a really lousy sucker

Laxative:
- a directive with little umph
- a substance that gives the bowels mucho umph
- inclination to being laid back with no umph

Jiggery-pokery:
- porcupine sex
- dishonesty
- something Dr. Ruth talked about, but no one could understand vhat zhe vuz zayingk..

Malady:
- your gal
- a redundant observation about your mother
- a disease

Obfuscate:
- hockey maneuver
- mathematical hypotenus that postulates that pi r squared, when any danged fool kin see the friggin' thang is round
- to confuse

Naturopathy:
- treat a disease without drugs
- an unpaved path through a pasture, littered with meadow muffins
- natural indifference

Umbiferous:
- providing shade
- throws up a lot
- hesitates before throwing up a lot

Pro rata:
- Latin meaning "professional snitch"
- Latin meaning "according to the rate"
- Latin meaning "Ettu, Brutus, you dirty rat"

Salmonella:
- tasty dish that's brought up a lot (ducking boos, throwd items and sympathetic reflex reactions)
- bacterial food poisoning
-hitman for a NY crime family

Summa cum laude:
- Latin meaning "highest standard"
- Latin meaning "a summer thunderstorm"
- Latin meaning "I think she's past breathing hard"

Spitchcock:
- Alfred
- a male nightmare
- a split-fried eel

Tableau:
- French meaning "socially unacceptable"
- French meaning "picturesque"
- French meaning "an Islamofascist suicide bomber disguised as a carbonated beverage"

Thence:
- a former fence
- past tense of "the"
- for that reason

Venetian:
- a native of Venice
- a blind native of Venice
- a blinds maker native to Venice

Wake:
- what you have to do to hit the 'snooze' button
- celebration of a dead person
- debris left behind celebrants if the dead person wakes up and joins them

Yo-ho:
- used to solicit in some venues
- used to attract attention
- saying something akin got Don Imus fired briefly

Yowl:
- loud wailing cry
- loud wailing cry that the utterer wasn't sure how to spell
- exclamation when hit by low-flying owl

Zeitgeist:
- exclamation when confronted by unexpected geist
- spirit that drops in and zeits a spell
- spirit of the times

Sum:
-Redneck meaning "that sky ball that makes it light and hot"
- Redneck meaning "ah got sum; howz 'bout y'all?"
- Sumthing mathematical

Pantaloon:
- a screwy duck in your pants
- pants worn by a character in an Italian comedy
- pantless obscene phone caller

Udopia:
- an imagined perfect place
- an imagined perfect place for morons out of touch with reality
- an autobiography of a drug user-turned-evangelist, that winds up featured on Oprah Winfrey's Book of the Month Club, makes millions, and winds up being a complete fabrication...DOH!

I think my dictionary's melting...

4 comments:

Hale McKay said...

Skunk,

What can I say? You da man!

Skunkfeathers said...

Webster's and the Reader's Digest Oxford Dictionaries have put out an APB for me: wanted for Crimes Against Verbiage. Does that mean I'll have letters on my prison smock, instead of numbers?

VIII is just around da corner...and if they don't get me first, IX is not far behind. Good thing my doll of a high school English teacher doesn't know what I do to her cherished grammar now...

Bilbo said...

Pantaloon...a screwy duck in your pants? I could have gone all day without thinking about THAT one!

Serena said...

I'm laughing so hard I'm practically spewing. This is one of your best yet, Skunky.:-)