isis (i-ziz) noun, (not to be confused with Isis) thought to derive from presidential testimony, although this is unclear = 1) Logical arcanery; 2) an arcane logical construction hidden in a text, a kind of riddle, e.g. (to paraphrase), 'The Cheshire Cat disappeared very slowly until nothing was left but its grin."

The isis here is that, since cats don't have grins, this statement can only mean that the Cheshire Cat disappeared slowly until nothing was left of it at all (the "Carroll text"). It has been pointed out, however, that the Cheshire Cat was an invention of Carroll's, and, furthermore, that the Alice specimen was the only Cheshire Cat known with certainty to have existed. Because of this, the cat could, indeed, have had a grin and the meaning could, therefor, be the plain meaning of the text. But this argument has been convincingly refuted. Since we cannot know, with any degree of certainty, whether the Cheshire Cat did or did not, in fact, grin, the question of the extent of its grin's disappearance remains logically ambiguous and factually uncertain (the "isisic conundrum"); most experts are satisfied that this does not prevent us classifying the Carroll text as an isis. M Hare, however, proposes a different theory. On the basis of the isisic conundrum, Hare posits the existence of a hyper-isis existing between the plain of the text and the plane of the isisic conundrum, itself. Hare thus extrapolates from the Insel hypothesis according to which the deep grammar of the juxtaposition of the plain meaning with the plane meaning of the isis is equivalent to that of the encapsulated juxtaposition of "to decimate" as posited by IP. (see, also: hyper-isis)

vocuscious vo-kyoo-shus adj. from L. flatus vocus = said of windbags.

humptydumteenth hum-tee-dump-teenth adj from English nursery rhyme = used to describe the last of a long succession of computer failures, esp. of PCs, as in "My f'ing computer crashed for the humptydumpteenth time today."