Wordsmith.org: the magic of words


A.Word.A.Day

About | Media | Search | Contact  


Home

Today's Word

Yesterday's Word

Archives

FAQ


Aug 10, 2025
This week’s theme
Lewis Carroll

This week’s words
rabbit hole
phlizz
jabberwock
white knight
boojum

How popular are they?
Relative usage over time

AWADmail archives
Index

Next week’s theme
Exempli gratia

Send a gift that
keeps on giving,
all year long:
A gift subscription of A.Word.A.Day or the gift of books
Bookmark and Share Facebook Twitter Digg MySpace Bookmark and Share

AWADmail Issue 1206

A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Tidbits about Words and Language

Sponsor’s message: Johnny Mustard Yuk, Retired -- “Fear and Loathing at West Point,” is a highly-fictionalized account of our hero’s ignominious and thankfully brief time in the Army. Decidedly un-p.c., this gonzo gift is perfect for soldiers of all stripes. Buy Now.



From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the Net

Pupils Should Put Down the Weights, and Pick Up the Language Textbooks
The Daily Telegraph
Permalink

A Word Is Born -- and Critiqued: Healthocide
National Public Radio
Permalink



From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Coined terms

Here’s a selection of coined words readers shared this week.

My word is ussie. It’s a selfie of more than one person.
-Gita Pearl, Montreal, Canada (gitagerry sympatico.ca)

Barnista. A retail clerk in a farm supply store.
-Carl Hardeman, Collierville, Tennessee (cwhardeman yahoo.com)

Canuteling (or Knutling): A hopeless moan about an irritating fashion that has caught on. Basically, tilting at the windmill.
-Mark Adler, Béziers, France (markadler orange.fr)

I made up a new punctuation mark, the quomma. It’s a question mark with a comma at the base instead of a period. It’s for those sentences where you ask a question in the first part of a sentence but then complete the sentence with a non-question. Have you ever seen a quomma (quomma inserted) because if not you really should.
-Ann Percival (annpercival49 gmail.com)

Yes, Viagra is in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It is listed as a noun, with the earliest known use in the 1990s, specifically from 1996 in PR Newswire. The OED’s entry notes that the origin of the word is unknown. I coined the name as part of my work for the branding firm David Wood Associates/Wood Worldwide. Company later known as Interbrand Wood. More here (pdf)
-Arlene Teck, Rockaway, New Jersey (arlene.teck gmail.com)

Full Jonny: I know of a man who has won neither a Nobel nor an Olympic gold, but perhaps equally impressively he was a combat medic as a Navy SEAL, went to Harvard medical school, became a physician, is considered a naval aviator and flight surgeon, and now is an astronaut: Jonny Kim. A neologism to honor him should be to go full Jonny. Overachiever extraordinaire.
-Keith Battan (MD, but none of the rest of it ;-), Morrison, Colorado (fkbattan gmail.com)

Time tetris: The art of making things fit in the time available. Usage: “I played good time tetris today! In the morning I caught up on some email before a meeting. Then in the afternoon I had three hours with nothing on my calendar, so I made a lot of progress on a major project.”
Car neighbor: A person who parks next to you, especially one who does so routinely, as in a reserved parking system. Usage: “I almost couldn’t open the door and get in, because my car neighbor parked crooked again.”
-Janette Rosenbaum, Grand Rapids, Michigan (janette.rosenbaum outlook.com)

Sycophantasia: The strange world of Washington, DC.
-Elizabeth Hannan, Tellico Plains, Tennessee (skywayliz gmail.com)

Grelief: Grief with relief. A term that accurately described my feeling of extreme sadness mingled with blessed relief when my mother passed away (at age 90) after seven years of intensive care needs from her ever-escalating dementia.
-Flash Rosenberg, Manhattan, New York (flashberg gmail.com)

I have not won a Nobel (yet), perhaps because I have neither been baracked nor have I donalded.
To be baracked: To be given a Nobel (or any other honour) without having worked for it.
To donald: To demand a Nobel (or any other honour) without having worked for it.
-Bhuvaneswari Sundaram, Chennai, India (bhu.sundaram gmail.com)

Idiodyssey: A long, winding, idiotic journey. A neologism my husband and I created, based on a conversation we were having about long, unproductive trips.
-Be Scott, Taos, New Mexico (finaleyes icloud.com)

Back in the 1980s, I was president of the Brookline Tenant Union in Brookline, Massachusetts. At the time, with a large rental housing stock in town, every annual town election was fought over rent control, and it was our job to endorse and promote candidates who supported rent control and other tenant issues. One year, someone got the idea of not only telling voters whom to vote for, but also to name some of the candidates for whom they shouldn’t vote. So we not only would endorse some candidates, we would disendorse others.
-A. Joseph Ross, Brookline, Massachusetts (joe attorneyross.com)

I was sitting with my mom before beginning my new job. She asked, “Are you excited?” Without thinking, I said, “I’m anxited.” That’s me, anxious and excited.
-Amy Kirchhoff, Ewing, New Jersey (mylifewithfour gmail.com)

Many years ago when our children were young we were holidaying in Sydney, wandering around the historic Rocks district near the Harbour Bridge and were constantly waiting around for my wife, who always takes her time in such places to read in detail all the many information boards. “Why is Mum taking so long?” was the constant cry from our son and daughter who were eager to move onto something, anything, else. My reply to them was to coin the verb plaquing: spending inordinate amounts of time reading plaques. It continues to be my wife’s favourite pastime, and has been a regular part of the family lexicon ever since.
-Steve Boyd, Milawa, Australia (steve boyds.com.au)

Wallowance: The amount of time one is allowed to engage in self-pity after any given setback or disappointment, which must be proportional to the size of the setback.
-Jen Wallace, Dallas, Texas (jnw1184 gmail.com)

My sister and I shared a bedroom growing up and had two different sets of bunk beds. The first ones had bunkie boards -- the thinner-than-box-springs foundations upon which our mattresses sat -- that my dad deemed insufficiently sturdy. So when we got new bunk beds, he made his own bunkie boards. And how. He bought beefier lumber than anyone would spec for such a project. He not only placed the slats closer together than strictly necessary but glued and screwed every connection. I’m probably not even aware of half of the security measures he took. No way his (probably, what, seventy-pound?) younger daughter was going to crash through one of these bunkie boards onto his older daughter below!
But on to the coinage. From this episode from my childhood has arisen the adjective bunkie. Applied to a person, bunkie means something like (and I consulted my dad about this, since he’s the one who actually coined the word) “inclined to prioritize safety, durability, and craftsmanship over profit, ease of construction, and appearance.” The word can also describe the result of such a person’s efforts, i.e. “well-constructed, durable, safe, functional”.
-Sophia Merow, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (sdmerow gmail.com)


Despite being legally blind in his later years, my father-in-law would point out specks of dust or dirt all the way across the room with his peripheral vision. My wife, being fully sighted, has inherited a more intense version of the trait and goes to work compulsively cleaning whatever surface the offending smudge or particle is on. I say she’s Lady Macbeth-ing it.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Amberivalence: The feeling one has while driving when the traffic light changes to yellow when you are close to it.
-Jerry Peters, Richmond, Virginia (jerry mucho-gusto.org)

Curioustorian: Not a historian, but one whose curiosity leads them to investigate history.
-Cameron Cross (cross.cameron gmail.com)

Expatrobate: Expat + reprobate. In many girly bars in countries like Thailand, retired expatrobates can be seen holding court dressed in signature singlet, shorts, and flip flops, and drinking bottles of Chang or Singha.
-Sean Boyle, Singapore (seaniebee hotmail.com)

My mother always called the bits of paper left over from cutting something out snipples. When I married, my English-professor husband insisted it was not a real word. I became an art teacher in 1969. I found the word very useful when telling my classes to clean up from cutting activities. When I retired after 45 years, I figured out I had taught over 10,000 children that word.
-Joan Koster, Barrington, Canada (jmbkoster gmail.com)

Fempire: A woman’s self-made multi-million dollar real estate holdings. The back story: In 1978 I went to buy a refrigerator for the new house my now-ex and I had bought in Dallas. I was going to pay for it with a check from my own, not a joint, checking account. The store clerk told me I couldn’t buy the fridge without my husband present. At that time I had a BA from Yale and an MS from Columbia. So I asked to see the manager. He confirmed the clerk’s ruling. He said, “Women can’t make major financial decisions.” Now I had a crusade.
After my divorce (I got no child support because the Texas judge told me, “Ma’am, you went to Yale. You can make your own money.”) I got my real-estate license and went to work as an investor and property manager. Today my fempire has properties in Aspen, Dallas, and Las Vegas.
-Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Las Vegas, Nevada (yale1974 gmail.com)

Equitimal: We know equidistant, but there isn’t a word for a journey with two or more options which take a similar length of time but are different distances.
-Lorna Pistell, Epsom, UK (lorna.pistell futureelectronics.com)

Oblication: When you travel to visit family on your time off -- not exactly a vacation, but obligatory.
-Felicia Eth, San Francisco, California (feliciaeth.literary gmail.com)

Artickle: Something written that amuses me.
-Stephen Darr, Thornton, New Hampshire (sdarr darr.com)

At my age, it’s great to take a short nap once or twice a day. I tell my grandkids I’m going to take a napkin. But if it’s really short, I tell them I’m going to take a napple.
-Judah Rosner, Washington, DC (jlr4206 gmail.com)

When I was very young, I learned that “ambiguous” meant “capable of two possible meanings”. I thought “What if there were a word with more than two possible meanings?” I came up with multibiguous. When I told my aunt of my coinage, she replied, “What you mean is, ‘vague’.”
-E D M Landman, MD, Thetford, Vermont (wil0828 yahoo.com)

I have a silly little word that I ended up creating specifically for my cats: Sopatetic: presenting oneself as desperately in need of sympathy or aid when one is actually perfectly fine (such as how my beloved feline Frisk will often act, as if she’s been starved for weeks when she just ate a few hours before.) Made by baby-talk-ifying “so pathetic”.
-River Blackstone, Minneapolis, Minnesota (rvblackstone gmail.com)

The word I coined is naggravation. It fits perfectly how I feel receiving my husband’s persistent “reminders”.
-Babette Hiestand, Walnut Creek, California (shorelinemomct yahoo.com)

In medical school, there was one particular chap named Shiv sharing my dissecting table who had the propensity to cut nerves and arteries that were not supposed to be cut at that point in time. So, the word cut became synonymous with our clumsy friend’s name Shiv. For example, if we could not find a structure we were looking for in a corpse, the expression used was “Someone must have shivved it.” To gain access and view deeper structures one had to shiv the superficial ones.
-Sanjiv Desai, Jodhpur, India (dr_s_desai yahoo.com)

In the evening, just before bedtime, we would boris our dog. Boris is a contraction of a fictitious Russian sounding name: “Boris Kolarov”, rhyming slang for “collar off”. Thus, it was time to boris the dog.
-Jacobus Dittmar, Adelaide, Australia (jac.d48 bigpond.com)

Wellite: Those who are conscious of and committed to healthy habits and a positive philosophy that supports personal responsibility for quality of life and the common decencies. A wellite believes that modern medicine is a wonderful thing but there are two problems: people expect too much of it and too little of themselves.
-Don Ardell, The Villages, Florida (awr.realwellness gmail.com)

Ingloat: To secretly feel smug about your success.
-Eugene Mahon, MD, Manhattan, New York (ejmahon8 gmail.com)

Disingenupost. This is a post to a social media site where the purpose is to show off something (new car, jewelry, hot body, etc.) The caption, however, states something altruistic.
Example: A post thanking a wonderful husband for flowers while displaying a giant diamond front and center in the picture.
-Amy Clayton, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (avamalone65 gmail.com)

Redundagurge: A statement or expression that is unnecessary or superfluous. For example, to say something after it happens like “Watch out!” when someone trips up.
-Adam and Joshua Webb, Brighton & Hove, UK (adamjwebb hotmail.com)

I don’t have a car anymore, but when I did, I was an unter driver. We all know what an Uber driver is? Uber is German for over. Unter means under. An unter driver gives people lifts but doesn’t get paid for it.
-Elizabeth Block, Toronto, Canada (elizabethblock netzero.net)

Committification: The process by which a group of people, often in a committee, attempts to make a decision or reach consensus, resulting in a diluted, compromised, and often less effective version of the original idea.
-Kandace Aviles, Tijuana, Mexico (KAviles sandiego.gov)

I was married three times and have two sons, who are half-brothers. My ex-husbands had other children. So our family “tree” branches out in chaotic and weird ways. One day, when I was telling some family stories to my children, my son retorted, “This is not a family tree; this is a family bush.”
-Tanya Khovanova, Mentor, Massachusetts (tanyakh yahoo.com)

When I was about four, my father asked me what I did that day. He said, “Did you play ball? Did you roller skate? Did you climb on the jungle gym?” I said no to all those. So he said, “Well what DID you do?” I said, I friendled. My father told someone who told Walter Winchell who put it in his column sometime around 1937.
-Vivien Malloy, Rye, New York (vgmalloy gmail.com)

When I was very young, five or six, I coined a term combining pheasant and duck, but my parents were not at all pleased by that.
-Charles E. Combs, Boston, Massachusetts (charles.combs verizon.net)

Knugby. From knee rugby. With two rugby-playing sons, they often wanted a contest inside our home. Not ideal, so knee rugby evolved. They could play this in their room, so long as they stayed on their knees (or lower). Less chance of breakages of any kind. Soon enough, knee rugby was abbreviated to knugby.
-Rob McKay, Sydney, Australia (mckayrob bigpond.net.au)

Obnox: To do something that people (targeted) find obnoxious. “My wearing a pro-Obama tee shirt was intended to obnox my hyperconservative right-wing uncle.”
-Dalit Solins, Coachella, California (via website comments)

Backal. This should be a word. It is the opposite of frontal. As in, a backal rash. Why not?
-Linda Stewart, San Diego, California (lbs60flowers gmail.com)

I’ve had a word published in one of the Douglas Adams / John Lloyd Liff books which provide definitions for extant place names. There was a competition for contributions and I was among the winners. My word: Bulwell: To talk with great confidence on a subject about which one knows nothing.
-Mike Robinson, Nottingham, UK (mikerobinson666 hotmail.co.uk)

Giffenpock: From GFNPOC (Good For Nothing Piece Of Crap). A giffenpock is usually a cheap gadget that doesn’t work as intended and has no value.
-Beth Keena, Pittsboro, North Carolina (b_keena yahoo.com)

Idiosopher: Two decades ago I ran an online forum for fencers (the Olympic sport) in Virginia. I went through a phase of giving frequent posters unique titles suited to them, mostly made up or disused esoteric words. My friend and clubmate and frequent nemesis on the piste Joe Hoffman will expound on subjects as far flung as his studies of Anglo-Saxon poetry, whatever relates to his doctorate in physics, the work of renovating a farm in the countryside, and the highly technical aspects of his daily work, just to scratch the surface. I coined idiosopher for his forum title to reflect his unique view of the world and his knowledge of it -- an idiosyncratic philosopher.
-Jeff Snider, Falls Church, Virginia (jeff snider.com)

Post ego: A term coined to describe the required state of mind of Harvard Business School graduates from the class of 1978 who gather for lunch every year at Christmas and are not permitted to discuss or describe their individual professional and financial achievements but are granted ample opportunity to highlight family, social and charitable activities.
-Bob Daum, North Palm Beach, Florida (rcd rcdaum.com)

Signorance: When one drives with a turn signal on with no intent to turn, thus causing confusion for other drivers.
-Mary Saisselin, Paris, France (mfinnla mac.com)

Ask-tell: a statement in the form of a question. E.g: You’re not going to wear that to the party, are you? You’re not going to eat all of that food are you?
-Michael Williams, New York, New York (mwilliams10027 gmail.com)

Estrenate: To wear or use something for the first time.
Usage: I am estrenating my new socks today!
History: I live in Spain, and they have an amazing verb: Estrenar. it means to wear or use something for the first time. In English the closest is “to debut” or “to premiere”, but you wouldn’t use that for simple things like socks. So I officially borrowed it from Spanish, and now I use it regularly.
-Denise Jones, Barcelona, Spain (dj.jonestown gmail.com)

Fingerpecking: like fingerpicking on a stringed instrument, but hunting and pecking with one’s fingers on a keyboard, especially a phone’s keypad.
-Be Scott, Taos, New Mexico (finaleyes icloud.com)

Trarumpf: An import tax or duty levied at the whim of an authoritarian ruler with little or no understanding of or relationship to established trading patterns or the economic impact of these duties on downstream manufacturers and consumers.
-Dennis Berry, Sanibel, Florida (dennis.wayne.berry gmail.com)

There is a well known psychiatric term known as megalomania. It has recently been followed by an almost identical term MAGAlommania.
-Carl Sukkot, Copenhagen, Denmark (cs scribe.dk)



From: Brian Turner (brian.turner health.wa.gov.au)
Subject: Nobel + Olympics

Only one person has ever received a Nobel prize and won an Olympic medal (not gold). That would be Philip Noel-Baker who won a silver medal in the 1500m at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959.

Dr. Brian Turner, Perth, Australia



Email of the Week -- Brought to you buy Johnny Mustard, Yuk, Retired. The Corps Has!

From: Aaron Altman (aeroaltman gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--rabbit hole

Having supervised a few PhD students, I have found that one of the defining features of doctoral studies is learning how to navigate the seemingly endless source of rabbit holes generated by profound study of any subject. Identifying which of the candidate rabbit holes will yield the most promising results and negotiating the compromise between which exciting unanswered questions to ignore is perhaps one reason why doctoral degrees are so challenging to complete. It’s also a common justification for why so many newly minted PhDs have a seemingly diverse set of publications at graduation despite the laser-focus on the central dissertation topic.

Aaron Altman, Dayton, Ohio



From: Darby Beranek (darbyberanek gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--rabbit hole

I visited the most amazing children’s museum based on beloved picture books in Kansas City, Missouri: The Rabbit hOle.

I highly recommend it to anyone of any age who appreciates literature. It’s simply fantastic. If I lived in KC, I’d visit every week.

Darby Beranek, Little Rock, Arkansas



From: Jean Gibran (englishjg comcast.net)
Subject: jabberwork

Always remember Lewis Carroll’s letter to Girls Latin Boston students allowing them to use The Jabberwock as their newspaper’s title!

“Mr. Lewis Carroll has much pleasure giving the Editresses of the proposed magazine permission to use the title they hoped for. ...” See more.

Jean Gibran, Boston, Massachusetts



From: Jerry Helffrich (jhelffrich swri.org)
Subject: Boojums

David Mermin, professor of physics at Cornell University, used the word boojum to describe the weird behavior of liquid helium as a superfluid. A lovely recount of the origin of that association was published in Physics Today (pdf). He also related this in his book Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age. Mermin is a gifted writer, and an author of a classic textbook on condensed matter physics.

Jerry Helffrich, San Antonio, Texas



From: Eric A Ladner (ealadner comcast.net)
Subject: Boojum

There was an early cruise missile called the Snark. The supersonic version was the Boojum.

Eric A Ladner, Tacoma, Washington



Jabber-whacky
From: Alex McCrae (ajmccrae277 gmail.com)
Subject: jabberwock and white knight

With his seeming stream-of-unconsciousness tangle of verbiage, Trump is the quintessential Jabber-Whacky. Here. I’ve granted his ultimate wish, to be a bona fide monarch. But befitting his bellicose and cruel nature, I put him in the guise of one of Lewis Carroll’s most despised characters, The Queen of Hearts.

Courty Love

In contemplating the term white knight, I harkened back to the British 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite painters, whose primary subject matter was young, beautiful, red-haired, pale-complected damsels either in distress, deep thought, at their loom, or in the embrace of some dashing knight in shining armor. Here, our white knight has fulfilled his promise, yet his beloved reminds him that he’s, as the French would say, en retard. Better late than never.

Alex McCrae, Van Nuys, California



Anagrams

This week’s theme: Lewis Carroll
  1. Rabbit hole
  2. Phlizz
  3. Jabberwock
  4. White knight
  5. Boojum
=
  1. Whirlpool, logjam
  2. Where is the object?
  3. Babble, buzz with wit
  4. Meek hero
  5. Ticklish Snark
-Dharam Khalsa, Burlington, North Carolina (dharamkk2 gmail.com)
=
  1. Mob maze
  2. Hollow
  3. Berk chat, babble (joker high jinks, titter!)
  4. Rescue whiz
  5. Will-o’-the-wisp
=
  1. Pickle, thick jam
  2. Haze
  3. WWW troll: Gibberish
  4. He will boost biz, eh
  5. Snark, the boojum tree
-Shyamal Mukherji, Mumbai, India (mukherjis hotmail.com) -Julian Lofts, Auckland, New Zealand (jalofts xtra.co.nz)

Make your own anagrams and animations.



Limericks

Rabbit hole

In an airplane I once tried to fly
I got lost, and I’ll now tell you why.
There were unruly crowds
Of cumulus clouds.
That’s a rabbit hole up in the sky.
-Rudy Landesman, New York, New York (ydur36 hotmail.com)

There’s a rabbit hole lurking online
Called YouTube. I once thought it fine.
It appeared in my house
With the click of a mouse,
And the whole day was no longer mine.
-Sara Hutchinson, New Castle, Delaware (sarahutch2003 yahoo.com)

“My scheme made our finances wither!”
Said Costello one day in a dither.
“This is some rabbit hole!
But I’ll make Abbott whole,
Or forever he’ll think I’m chopped liver.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Phlizz

I envision a world that just is
Like champagne made of bubbles and fizz,
But that’s not where it’s at.
The world’s humdrum and flat.
My vision is simply a phlizz.
-Rudy Landesman, New York, New York (ydur36 hotmail.com)

My hopefulness sometimes seems strange
To me and my friends within range.
“World peace is a phlizz
And it is what it is”
Isn’t true. Because people can change.
-Sara Hutchinson, New Castle, Delaware (sarahutch2003 yahoo.com)

It is thanks to the latest AI
That I’m seeing a real-looking guy.
He’s merely a phlizz;
That’s all that he is --
I’m confused, and technology’s why.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

“I’ve been wrong!” says Javert in Les Mis;
“His villainy was but a phlizz!
Although cold makes me shiver,
I’d jump in this river,
If only my hair wouldn’t frizz.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Jabberwock

His comments come out of the blue --
What jabberwock Donald will spew!
He makes odd remarks
About killer sharks;
And windmills, he says, spoil the view!
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

On the roof of the White House he’d walk,
With nonsense, and jabberwock talk.
Some watched, and thought, “Jump!”,
To the wild waving Trump,
But he just continued his squawk.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

“What you told him is pure jabberwock;
It defied any logic,” said Spock.
“My kind words to that boy
Helped him heal,” said McCoy;
“What you haven’t attempted, don’t knock.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

White knight

I still smoke. Yes, I know. It’s not right.
It’s a habit I’m trying to fight.
So, please do not flee.
Be a white knight for me.
I’ve no matches. I do need a light.
-Rudy Landesman, New York, New York (ydur36 hotmail.com)

Ladies all, if a passing white knight
Offers help in some way, please don’t fight.
Don’t sneer, frown, or glower
He’s not into power.
He is simply just being polite.
-Sara Hutchinson, New Castle, Delaware (sarahutch2003 yahoo.com)

A white knight I have long been awaiting,
But there’s none I’ve encountered while dating.
Still as it’s turned out
I now have no doubt
I can fend for myself without mating.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

“To solve every problem and plight,
Your savior won’t come make things right.”
Her mother, who knew,
Said, “Count dear, on you,
And don’t depend on a white knight.”
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

Said the damsel, “Oh my, what a plight!
For miles around, no white knight!
I need multiple squires
To quench my desires;
There’s not even one for tonight!”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Boojum

What the heck is the president doin’
With this boojum that he is pursuin’?
He thinks he knows best,
But experts attest
All those tariffs will bring us to ruin.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

I think my two dogs have a boojum!
‘Cause when I now try to pursue them
They just run amok.
Costs me many a buck,
But I couldn’t bear, oh gee, to lose ‘em!
-Bindy Bitterman, Chicago, Illinois (bindy eurekaevanston.com)

Thought Repubs, “This Big Bill sure is hairy;
To kick millions off health care we’re wary.
It seems like a boojum
To merrily Scrooge ‘em,
But Donald’s name-calling is scary!”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)



Puns

“Despite all the expert advice about chewing your food, I usually swallow the rabbit hole,” said the python.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“When I like a woman’s body part, I don’t ask or compromise or settle for half a loaf. I g-rabbit hole,” said Donald.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“A rabbit hole-y moley!” cried Becky when she saw her new bunny.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

“For a better marriage this time around we should take up gol-phlizz,” suggested Richard Burton.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“Phlizz Navidad!” the tipsy newscaster wished all his Spanish viewers.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

“No more jabberwock right up to your room, young man!” the exasperated mom ordered her son.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

“It chats with you while you stir fry!” said the ad for the Jabberwock.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“It’s snowing on Christmas Eve! A white knight!” shouted the gleeful children.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Chris’s seafood allergy rendered ta-boojum-bo shrimp.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

If you leave the circus the audience will boojum-bo,” pleaded P.T. Barnum.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people. -Herbert Hoover, 31st US President (10 Aug 1874-1964)

We need your help

Help us continue to spread the magic of words to readers everywhere

Donate

Subscriber Services
Awards | Stats | Links | Privacy Policy
Contribute | Advertise

© 1994-2025 Wordsmith