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of troy Offline OP
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these were sent to me-- with no source or credit listed.. i thought they were fun...

10 words that don't exist, but should:

1. AQUADEXTROUS (ak wa deks' trus) adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.

2. CARPERPETUATION (kar' pur pet u a shun) n. The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string or a piece of lint at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the acuum one more chance.

3. DISCONFECT (dis kon fekt') v. To sterilize the piece of candy you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, assuming this will somehow 'remove' all the germs.

4. ELBONICS (el bon' iks) n. The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater.

5. FRUST (frust) n. The small line of debris that refuses to be swept onto the dust pan and keeps backing a person across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep it under the rug.

6. LACTOMANGULATION (lak' to man gyu lay' shun) n. Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the 'illegal' side.

7. PEPPIER (pehp ee ay') n. The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want ground pepper.

8. PHONESIA (fo nee' zhuh) n. The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer.

9. PUPKUS (pup' kus) n. The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it.

10. TELECRASTINATION (tel e kras tin ay' shun) n. The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you're only six inches away.


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i LOVE carperpetuation! and i thought only *i* did that. good to know that least one other person is similarly afflicted =)

lactomangulation is also pretty funny; i've resorted to the plastic milk jugs, since the cretins in my household mangle the cardboards beyond recognition.


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yes, I love phonesia, too! and also telecrastination is despicably recognisable


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6. LACTOMANGULATION (lak' to man gyu lay' shun) n. Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the 'illegal' side.

I have been known to attack with a sharp-point knife to get the damned thing open!
Now what is the new word for the propensity -- found chiefly among males -- for using the remote control to flip through *all the channels rather than look at the TV Guide listing which is elbow adjacent?
C'mon' someone's got to have a candidate word.



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Helen, those were great. I laughed all the way thru the list, especially at Frust and Lactomangulation. Those two are representative of the general cussedness of things, and I thought of a few more and herewith suggest words for them:

OENOGRANULOSIS: What you get when some fool of a wineseller has stored the bottle standing up.

MALDEMISTIFICATION: The blurry or dirty area smack in the middle of your windshield (windscreen) which never gets clean because the wipers always wear out in the middle, never on the ends.

HOMOADHESION: The flapping back onto itself of the torn-off end of a roll of plastic film or tape, so as to make itself invisible.

VEGETODELIQUESCENCE: The goop in the bottom of the bin in your refrigerator which was once a bunch of parsley, cucumber, etc.


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what is the new word for the propensity -- found chiefly among males -- for using the remote control to flip through *all the channels rather than look at the TV Guide listing which is elbow adjacent?

This is another of those concepts that is covered by a simple phrase rather than some obscure neologism. The phrase is common sense. The TV Guide ain't gone tell you nothin important, like is it got hot babes and car crashes in it. You needs to actual look at the show to tell that.


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It's gotten so that you can use the tv to get the guide; click a button on the remote, and a list comes up.


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BOGOMETER (boh-goh'm@-tr) n. An instrument to measure BOGOSITY,
generally a conversational device, as in "my bogometer is reading
in the red on that idea" or "I think you just bent the needle on my
bogometer".

BOGON (bo'gon) [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but
doubtless reinforced by the similarity to "Vogon"] n. 1. The
elementary particle of bogosity (see QUANTUM BOGODYNAMICS). For
instance, "the ethernet is emitting bogons again," meaning that it
is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query
packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server, having
the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus or
incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By extension, used
to refer metasyntactically to any bogus thing, such as "I'd like to
go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon."

BOGON FILTER (bo'gon fil'tr) n. Any device, software or hardware,
which limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of bogons.
Example: "Engineering hacked a bogon filter between the Cray and
the VAXen and now we're getting fewer dropped packets."

BOGOSITY (boh-gos-@-tee) n. 1. The degree to which something is BOGUS
(q.v.). At CMU, bogosity is measured with a bogometer; typical
use: in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener
might raise his hand and say, "My bogometer just triggered." The
agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat (uL). 2. The
potential field generated by a bogon flux; see QUANTUM
BOGODYNAMICS.

BOGUS (boh'guhs) [WPI, Yale, Stanford] adj. 1. Non-functional. "Your
patches are bogus." 2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3.
False. "Your arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That algorithm
is bogus." 5. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas." (This
word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of
RANDOM.) [Etymological note from Lehman/Reid at CMU: "Bogus" was
originally used (in this sense) at Princeton, in the late 60s. It
was used not particularly in the CS department, but all over
campus. It came to Yale, where one of us (Lehman) was an
undergraduate, and (we assume) elsewhere through the efforts of
Princeton alumni who brought the word with them from their alma
mater. In the Yale case, the alumnus is Michael Shamos, who was a
graduate student at Yale and is now a faculty member here. A
glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was
first popularized (e.g., autobogophobia: the fear of becoming
bogotified).]

QUANTUM BOGODYNAMICS (kwahn'tm boh`goh-die-nam'iks) n. Theory
promulgated by ESR (one of the authors) which characterizes the
universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car
salesmen, TV evangelists, and SUITs in general), bogon sinks (such
as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon
absorption, of course, causes human beings to behave mindlessly and
machines to fail (and may cause them to emit secondary bogons as
well); however, the precise mechanics of the bogon-computron
interaction are not yet understood and remain to be elucidated.
Quantum bogodynamics is most frequently invoked to explain the
sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of
suits; the latter emit bogons which the former absorb. See BOGON,
COMPUTRON, SUIT.

[source: the Hacker's Dictionary]


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Quantum bogodynamics is most frequently invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits;

This would appear to apply to theoretical physicists, too. Wolfgang Pauli disapproved of his name being applied to the Exclusion Principle, commonly known as the Pauli Principle as he didn't want it to be confused with the Pauli Effect. The latter referred to the tendency of lab equipment to malfunction in direct proportion to the proximity of any theoretical physicist whose theories were being tested. The strength of the Pauli Effect was a measure of the prestige of the theoretical physicist. Pauli's proudest moment was when a piece of lab equipment involved in a test of one of his theories completely self-destructed due to his presence at a railroad station several miles away.


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Can anyone suggest a word for the brief yet sickening moments of anticipation that occur between stubbing your toe and actually feeling the pain involved?




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