2020 Dec. Goat Daily Rant 17
12Rant: Words
Sometimes, all the words of the English language are insufficient or too cumbersome to express a concept. Here are a few that I and my colleagues have come up with.
- Frauduct (n): Fraudulent product. ex: Blinker fluid, copper wrist bands, magnet therapy, snake oil, title loan, etc.
- Guesspertise (n): Wild-ass estimation proficiency.
- Rornge (adj): The orangish red color of something that should have been reddishly red.
- Manduntary (adj): The characteristic of a strictly voluntary event that your boss tells you to show up for.
- Doltage (n): Digital Voltage, a universal constant that decreases with time.
- Potatoe (v): To spoil one’s political chances with a single excusable gaffe that the media choses to focus upon. Some people are immune.
- Sesquipedestrian (adj): Characteristic of a person who figures him/herself a linguistic genius, but has no greater facility with the English language than the average person.
- Balonium (n): A chemical element that is an important alloying agent in any frauduct.
- Deutschbag (n): A person who uses German words and phrases (esp. schadenfreude) among English speakers who don’t care to learn any German.
- Irritisement (n): That annoying commercial that makes you change the channel or just turn off the TV. Basically, any beverage commercial wherein you can her them slosh and swallow.
- Pizzagami (n): The art of successfully folding a pizza box far too big to fit in a garbage can.
- Primenesia (n): The malady of receiving an Amazon package and realizing you have no recollection of what you ordered.
- Bipolar Bear (n): A polar bear that immediately regrets the calories those penguins he just ate contained, so he goes on another swim across the equator, only to collapse in tears, bingeing on Klondike Bars. Well, what would you do?
- Stick Actuator (n): A jet-jockey whose skill set is so basic, he’s just there to move the stick.
- Vitamin V: The crucial sustenance you gain from a visit to the vending machine.
So, do you guys have any choice words that the Dictionary simply wasn’t big enough for?
- 9 comments, 16 replies
- Comment
Coffreak (n) a person who thinks that they are an endless font of wisdom concerning all things coffee.
Those are great!
I like Covidiot, though I didn’t make it up. Long ago we got some assemble-it-yourself furniture (there must be a better term for that) and it came with a very poorly translated sheet titled “Instractions.” So that’s what we called those ever after.
@Kyeh it’s called flatpack furniture or RTA, ready to assemble.
@RiotDemon Aha - thanks! I read somewhere once that you know you’re a grownup when you have furniture you didn’t assemble yourself - I guess I’ve never grown up.
@Kyeh @RiotDemon
…but IKEA is grown-up furniture…
@chienfou @RiotDemon But mine’s Target.
@Kyeh A couple of decades ago I bought a flat-pack workbench/cabinet/pegboard thing. It came with assembly instructions in Chinese with an “English” translation. Fortunately, there were good diagrams to follow because the instructions lost something (its mind, apparently) in translation. “Side position with head to horizon, gently nudge back to side and affix with attachments.” My brother’s comment: “Some aZENbly required.”
@Kyeh @rockblossom Ah, good old Engrish!
There’s a good reason Ikea just uses pictorials; no translation necessary no matter where they’re selling the product. Sure, it now means everyone is equally baffled, but at least no one can comment about the instructions being “lost in translation”.
@narfcake @rockblossom Those aZENbly
instractions are almost poetic!
@Kyeh @narfcake Without really good diagrams, it sometimes comes down to the Zen: discovering the true inner nature of the parts and allowing them to express how they prefer to be assembled.
@narfcake @rockblossom That sounds profoundly true!
Voluntold (v, past tense): When your boss informs you that you will be attending a manduntary event.
@mike808 we use this word too but in a slightly different manner. If management is looking for someone to complete a task they usually send out an email asking for a volunteer. If no one volunteers someone will be voluntold to do it.
@mike808 Yep, a very familiar term.
Any former military knows this well.
Snownesia (n) - the state when a driver has forgotten how to drive in snow since last winter.
@ybmuG IKR! I spent a winter in Connecticut once. Half an hour making donuts and sliding around an empty mall parking lot cemented the survival skills that would bear me through the winter months. Native drivers, however, tended to proceed with bold confidence and a gap in their memories regarding how to navigate snow. Nearly got clobbered several times. I never encountered ice, though, lucky me.
Jackassery: institutionalized jack ass behavior.
Related to, but not the same as, asshattery.
In the mid 80’s comedian Rich Hall released a bunch of books of Sniglets (words that don’t appear in the dictionary, but should). One of my favorites was Essoasso - someone who cuts through a gas station to avoid a traffic light
@j2 I have that book! Somewhere…
Confession: my lifetime collection might be somewhat inspired by Sniglets.
My favorite:
Vacation Elbow (n): The condition that allows Dad/Mom to reach all the way back into the rearmost seats and smack the troublemaker.
Paraphrased. I get an image of Mr. Fantastic (Fantastic Four).
It’s not so much about what I ordered but what is arriving. Despite designating a day for most packages to arrive, a good number still ship out and arrive before then.
@narfcake so then Mehnesia (n) is the same malady with the opposite cause - packages arriving so long after the due date that you have no idea what they are.
@narfcake @ybmuG that’s what happens when I order small items on eBay from China. It’s like a little surprise for me.
aMehnesia: A chronic disease. Can be diagnosed when a package from Meh.com is delivered and you have no memory of it when your spouse/partner/SWMBO asks “What the fuck did you order this time?”.
If you have multiple packages being delivered after a Mehrathon or were trykng to score an IRK at 3am, please seek professional help for this debilitating disease.
@mike808 Ha! Just said (mostly) the same thing. Proof it must be true! Though your definition gets deeper into the psychosis of it, which is likely more accurate…
Philanthropest: someone who sees a problem, identifies someone who (they think) can help the problem, tells that person that they should help the problem, and then feels like they’ve taken care of the problem.