28 December 2017

Improving words

In this post, Donna at Tell Me a Story commented in passing on the boring definition of the word "enjambment" and proposed letting it mean what it looks like it should mean.  She was right, of course.  Language would be much better if words simply meant what they appear to mean.  I thus hereby propose the following revisions:

Admired:  Mired in ads -- applicable to many websites these days

Biking:  A monarch who "swings both ways"

Carpet:  A dog or cat owned by a vehicle

Catholic:  Addicted to felines

Combatant:  To fight against an insect invading one's picnic

Detail:  To remove an animal's rear appendage

Emulate:  That big Australian bird is never on time

Enjambment:  The state of having one's snout stuck in a jar of jam

Impeachment:  The act of stuffing the President into a giant peach so he can't cause any more trouble

Ireland:  The land of anger

Leotard:  A really stupid lion

Peccadillo:  A cross between a woodpecker and an armadillo

Pensacola:  The thinking man's soft drink

Propane:  In favor of sheets of glass

Punish:  A word possibly describing this post

Ramparts:  The parts of a male sheep

Ratification:  The act of transforming something into a rat

Rectify:  Richard Gere was accused of rectifying a gerbil

Retail:  Where you take your pet after detailing (see above)

Shampoo:  Fake feces

Triassic:  The era of animals with three asses

Then there's this, which you may need to think about for a moment.

6 Comments:

Blogger Harry Hamid said...

They need a word for that. Sort of like onomatopoeia, only with sight instead of sound.

28 December, 2017 17:42  
Blogger Donna said...

LOVE your, much better, definitions!

29 December, 2017 06:27  
Blogger W. Hackwhacker said...

"Impeachment: The act of stuffing the President into a giant peach so he can't cause any more trouble."

He's the pit(s)!

29 December, 2017 07:40  
Blogger Shaw Kenawe said...

This is fun! Here are my contributions:


grimace -- a bleak playing card
lamprey -- a runaway victim
pillage -- the medication era
drain -- failing precipitation
vanish - resembling a box-like vehicle
digest -- two deeds
grasp -- a heavy file
design -- remove an indication
invent -- placed in a shaft
subdivision -- cut a long sandwich in half
branching -- a high-fiber, high-pitched sound

29 December, 2017 10:56  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Thanks everyone! Shaw, I don't know how I missed some of those -- clearly there's much to do in the field of language reform.

30 December, 2017 15:10  
Blogger Daniel Wilcox said...

LOL;-)

Some of these are even worse than my corny Nebraska puns;-)

30 December, 2017 22:41  

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