These came to me via email today with the foll­wing lead-in:

> The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Style Invi­ta­tional once again
> asked read­ers to take
> any word from the dic­tio­nary, alter it by adding,
> sub­tract­ing, or chang­ing
> one let­ter, and sup­ply a new def­i­n­i­tion. Here are this
> year’s winners:

I thought some were kind of neat and wanted to pass them on. I also wanted to include the link to the Wash­ing­ton Post’s site for your enjoy­ment as well. A Google search quickly dis­cov­ers that I am not alone in want­ing to blog about these “new” words. After click­ing on a cou­ple of the links it is start­ing to seem like these may have been from 2003. They may not even have been more than one. Most inter­est­ingly I found ref­er­ence to these words from 1998! This is entirely pos­si­ble as it is a weekly item and they are up to num­ber 592 (mean­ing they started about 11–1/2 years ago.) Here is a link that will let you peruse the pre­vi­ous 100. With out fur­ther ado I present the rest of the email, 1–18 came today, the last 20 some odd I culled from the 1998 reerence:

1. Intaxi­ca­tion: Eupho­ria at get­ting a tax refund, which lasts until you real­ize it was your money to start with.
2. Rein­tar­na­tion: Com­ing back to life as a hillbilly.
3. Bozone: The sub­stance sur­round­ing stu­pid peo­ple that stops bright ideas from pen­e­trat­ing. The bozone layer, unfor­tu­nately, shows lit­tle sign of break­ing down in the near future.
4. Fore­ploy: Any mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion about your­self for the pur­pose of get­ting laid.
5. Cash­tra­tion: The act of buy­ing a house, which ren­ders the sub­ject finan­cially impo­tent for an indef­i­nite period.
6. Giraf­fiti: Van­dal­ism spray-painted very, very high.
7. Sar­chasm: The gulf between the author of sar­cas­tic wit and the per­son who doesn’t get it.
8. Inoc­u­latte: To take cof­fee intra­venously when you are run­ning late.
9. Hipati­tis: Ter­mi­nal coolness.
10. Osteo­pornosis: A degen­er­ate disease.
11. Kar­maged­don: It’s like, when every­body is send­ing off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a seri­ous bummer.
12. Decafalon: The gru­el­ing event of get­ting through the day con­sum­ing only things that are good for you.
13. Gli­bido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler effect: The ten­dency of stu­pid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arach­nolep­tic fit: The fran­tic dance per­formed just after you’ve acci­den­tally walked through a spi­der web.
16. Beelze­bug: Satan in the form of a mos­quito that gets into your bed­room at three in the morn­ing and can­not be cast out.
17. Cater­pal­lor: The color you turn after find­ing half a grub in the fruit you’re eating.
18. Igno­ranus: A per­son who’s both stu­pid and an asshole.
19. For­tis­si­moe: the musi­cal moment pro­duced when some­one seri­ally slaps the faces of the first-violin section.
20. Tatyr: a lech­er­ous Mr. Potato Head.
21. Dol­ter­geist: a spirit that decides to haunt some­place stu­pid, such as your sep­tic tank.
22. Con­ratemps: the resent­ment per­ma­nent work­ers feel toward the fill-in workers.
23. White­tater: a polit­i­cal hot potato.
24. Impo­tience: eager antic­i­pa­tion by men await­ing their Via­gra prescription.
25. Auto-da-feh: the exter­mi­na­tion of heretics via drown­ing in a vat of pus.
26. Stup­fa­ther: Woody Allen.
27. DIOS: the one true oper­at­ing system.
28. Writer’s tramp: a woman who prac­tices poetic licentiousness.
29. Tater­fa­mil­ias: the head of the Potato Head family.
30. Guil­lozine: a mag­a­zine for executioners.
31. Adu­latery: cheat­ing on your wife with a much younger woman who holds you in awe.
32. Suck­o­tash: a dish con­sist­ing of corn, lima beans and tofu.
33. Emas­cu­lathe: a tool for castration.
34. Bur­g­lesque: a poorly planned break-in.
35. Gen­i­tal­iar: an image-enhancing object that can be car­ried in a man’s front pocket.
36. Anti­fun gal: a prude.
37. Vase­ball: a game of catch played by chil­dren in the liv­ing room.
38. Eunouch: the pain of castration.
39. Hind­ker­chief: really expen­sive toi­let paper; toi­let paper at Buck­ing­ham palace.
40. Deifen­es­tra­tion: to throw all talk of God out the window.
41. Hozone: the area around 14th street.
42. Acme: a generic skin disease.
43. Hind­print: inden­ta­tion made by a couch potato.
44. Coi­terie: a very VERY close-knit group.

Just one of about 8 images attached to an email I received this morn­ing enti­tled, “If Women Ruled The World.”

A lady found out her dog could hardly hear so she took it to the Vet­eri­nar­ian. He found that the prob­lem was hair in its ears so he cleaned both ears and the dog could hear fine.

The vet then pro­ceeded to tell the lady that if she wanted to keep this from reoc­cur­ring she should go to the store and get some “Nair” hair remover and rub it in the dog’s ears once a month.

The lady goes to the drug store and gets some “Nair” hair remover. At the reg­is­ter the drug­gist tells her: “If you’re going to use this under your arms don’t use deodor­ant for a few days.” The lady says: “I’m not using it under my arms.”

The drug­gist says: “If you’re using it on your legs don’t shave for a cou­ple of days.”

The lady says: “I’m not using it on my legs either; if you must know, I’m using it on my schnauzer.”

The drug­gist says: “Stay off your bicy­cle for a week.”

The Smiths were unable to con­ceive chil­dren, and decided to use a sur­ro­gate father to start their fam­ily. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife and said, “I’m off. The man should be here soon”.

Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby pho­tog­ra­pher rang the door­bell, hop­ing to make a sale.

“Good morn­ing madam. I’ve come to.…..”

“Oh, no need to explain. I’ve been expect­ing you,” Mrs. Smith cut in.

“Really?” the pho­tog­ra­pher asked. “Well, good! I’ve made a spe­cialty of babies.”

“That’s what my hus­band and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat.”

After a moment she asked, blush­ing, “Well, where do we start?”

“Leave every­thing to me. I usu­ally try two in the bath­tub, one on the couch and per­haps a cou­ple on the bed. Some­times the liv­ing room floor is fun too.…you can really spread out!”

“Bath­tub, liv­ing room floor? No won­der it didn’t work for Harry and me.”

“Well, madam, none of us can guar­an­tee a good one every time. But if we try sev­eral dif­fer­ent posi­tions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the results.”

“My, my, that’s a lot of ..! ! .” gasped Mrs. Smith.

“Madam, in my line of work, a man must take his time. I’d love to be in and out in five min­utes, but you’d be dis­ap­pointed with that, I’m sure.”

“Don’t I know it,” Mrs. Smith mut­tered. The pho­tog­ra­pher opened his brief­case and pulled out a port­fo­lio of his baby pictures.

“This was done on the top of a bus.”

“Oh my god!!” Mrs. Smith exclaimed, tug­ging at her handkerchief.

“And these twins turned out excep­tion­ally well, when you con­sider their mother was so dif­fi­cult to work with.”

“She was dif­fi­cult?” asked Mrs. Smith.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. Peo­ple were crowd­ing around four and five deep, push­ing to get a good look.”

“Four and five deep?” asked Mrs. Smith, eyes widened in amazement.

“Yes,” the pho­tog­ra­pher said. “And for more than three hours, too. The mother was con­stantly squeal­ing and yelling I could hardly con­cen­trate! Then dark­ness approached and I began to rush my shots. Finally, when the squir­rels began nib­bling on my equip­ment, I just packed it all in.”

Mrs. Smith leaned for­ward. “You mean they actu­ally chewed on your um…equipment ?”

“That’s right. Well, madam, if you’re ready, I’ll set up my tri­pod so that we can get to work”

“Tri­pod??

“Oh yes, I have to use a tri­pod to rest my Canon on. It’s much too big for me to hold for very long. Madam? Madam? …Good Lord, she’s fainted!…