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.]
Men only age until they are three - I am assuming you mean mentally of course - hee hee.
ReplyDeleteFun! 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.
ReplyDeleteLady M: I take no responsibility for the attitudes of the French.....
ReplyDeleteAnnie: Glad to amuse -- maybe I should do more French ones.
Tout a fait!
ReplyDeleteA toot of fate indeed -- how can I ignore that?
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure they’ve been improved, but OK 😁
ReplyDeleteSlightly 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 🤷♂️
Improvement is in the eye of the beholder.....
ReplyDeleteI 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.