16 February 2024

Improving words (32)

More revised word definitions -- what the words visibly should mean, based on spelling.....

Conspiracy:  Prison inmates' predatory behavior on the high seas

Defender:  To remove the part of a car that surrounds a tire

Dreadnought:  To be terrified of the number zero

Kindred:  A compassionate communist

Manslaughter:  The gleeful sounds of an adult male

Mayfly:  Then again, it may not

Pursuit:  Clothes to wear while making cat noises

Rubicon:  To massage an eastern Christian religious portrait

Tetanus:  The asshole of a Vietnamese battle

Translate:  Someone who is actually on time, but identifies as being late

o o o o o

Special French section (since English uses so many French words):

Bête noire:  To gamble that there won't be any anger

Chacun à son goût:  Chagrined that one's son has gout

Chargé d'affaires:  Charged with multiple counts of adultery

Coup d'état:  To eat at the chicken coop

Crêpes suzette:  Little Suzy's creepy friends

Esprit de corps:  To spurt on a dead body

Fin de siècle:  A sickle used for cutting off fishes' organs of locomotion

Hors de combat:  Wartime prostitutes

Ménage à trois:  Men age only until they are three

Objet d'art:  To object to having darts thrown at you

Pied-à-terre:  Peed on a terrorist

Sang-froid:  Performed a song about an Austrian psychologist

Soi-disant:  Tofu disrespects a small insect

Table d'hôte:  The hottest table in the joint

[The previous "improving words" post is here.]

7 Comments:

Blogger Lady M said...

Men only age until they are three - I am assuming you mean mentally of course - hee hee.

16 February, 2024 13:28  
Anonymous Annie said...

Fun! Menage-a-trois made me laugh out loud. Soi-disant was another especially good one. I should probably not acknowledge that it took me longer than a nanosecond to "get" kindred--my mind simply stuck on the traditional form. Perhaps the good Dr. Sangfroid could explain.

17 February, 2024 13:49  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Lady M: I take no responsibility for the attitudes of the French.....

Annie: Glad to amuse -- maybe I should do more French ones.

18 February, 2024 03:11  
Anonymous Annie said...

Tout a fait!

18 February, 2024 04:24  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

A toot of fate indeed -- how can I ignore that?

18 February, 2024 04:44  
Anonymous Reaganite Independent said...

I’m not sure they’ve been improved, but OK 😁

Slightly OT, in the 1970s General Motors decided they could save money by changing the spelling of commonly used words, say transmission would be TranX or something.

They figured some of these words were typed billions of times a year and were wasting keystrokes/labor.

Not really the craziest idea ever, but it didn’t stick. Probably required too much effort to get people to stick to it 🤷‍♂️

21 February, 2024 05:51  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Improvement is in the eye of the beholder.....

I think the time saved in typing would be more than canceled out by extra time taken up by people reading that stuff trying to remember or figure out what all the abbreviated forms meant -- to say nothing of potential problems if somebody misinterpreted one.

21 February, 2024 06:19  

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