For those of you confused about the difference between donkeys, asses, and mules (I assume you can identify horses), this is for you. I hope I get all the terminology right, because each creature gets it own word based on gender, species, parentage, and whether or not it (in the case of males) has been […]
MadMania
Faith, Books, and Stuff
Tag: words
n. A unit of measurement equal to at least four billion. It was created as a humorous tribute to astronomer Carl Sagan.
n. One who attends a small, rural school in the middle of the Corn Belt, but dresses like he is growing up on the mean streets of Compton. The girls brought this wonderful term home from high school. As far as I know the usage is entirely localized to our school.
n. tobacco juice, or perhaps more accurately, tobacco spit. From now on when I highlight a word, I am going to try to, as the OED does, offer a quotation. In this case, a story: So we’re all sitting around playing D&D: Me, Mike, Kevin, and other people unimportant to this story. Kevin and I […]
To be stuck sitting on the bench during a baseball game.
I first heard this idiom last year some time from a woman at work. At first I thought it meant something vaguely dirty, so I figured I better look it up. It simply means to do a hasty job, or to do a job with the most minimal effort. It’s funny that I first heard […]
To do a great job and/or perform a loyal service. “He did a real yeoman’s job on that patio.” UPDATE: ‘yeoman’ is pronounced YO-mun, not YEE-O-MAN.
YOOS-uh-fruct. n., the right to enjoy the use of another’s property, apart from wasting or destroying it. “It was the bridegroom’s duty and interest to see that the dowry was duly paid. He enjoyed the usufruct of it during his life, and not unfrequently it was employed….” –Archibald Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs. It is an […]
[KAK-o-EETH-eez] n. an irresistible urge to do something inadvisable. I had never heard this word until reading Jim Shooter’s excellent blog.
Any wormlike insect larva that lives and grows in manure. A miser “This was, methinks too high a compliment to pass upon Nabal, to call him the man that liveth. David knew better things, that in God’s favour is life, not in the world’s smiles; and by the rough answer he was well enough served, for […]