I was challenged to a word-smithing duel. The prize is homemade peanut brittle and bragging rights. Every week the two of us each submit four slightly-altered words with their punning definitions to a judge selected by the peanut brittler. She rules on her idiosyncratic favorites: 2 points for first place, 1 point for second place. If Robert, my challenger, can hold me off for eight weeks, his peanut brittle is safe. If I reach 8 points, the brittle is forfeit.
At first I thought we could alter only one letter in the original word, a condition to which I carefully adhered until Robert began playing fast and loose with phonemes*, submitting creative chimeras like “Haiti and T” (“a Caribbean communications company”).
A good time to tinker with words is while I do my deep-water physical therapy at the pool. Wearing a sky-blue flotation belt, I jog, ski, corkscrew and frog-jump vigorously through the water, gazing across the lap lanes out the pool’s big windows at the fir trees in the park. In the shallow end the instructor is hollering at my compatriots, “Good! Remember your posture! Now lift your noodle in the air and add a slalom jump!” Meanwhile I’m jitterbugging around in the deep end murmuring, “Ambiguous. Bambiguous. Flambiguous. Crambiguous. Amjiguous…”
We are halfway through the contest. Here are my first four weeks’ entries. I crack myself up.
Week One: (we only submitted 3 words the first week)
Manateen: That awkward adolescent stage when one feels ungainly as a sea-cow.
Castroturf: How the dictator keeps his lawn so green.
Pteroductyls: The dinosaurs who live in your heat vents.
Week Two:
Bulltimatum: “It’s them or me!” the matador’s girlfriend declared.
Inflatuated: In love with your British apartment.
Tharpshooter: A cowboy who’s not a fan of modern dance.
Geckolalia: The compulsion to repeat after lizards.**
Week Three:
Jambiguous: When the handwritten label on that old jar of preserves has faded into illegibility.
Flamingoo: Why I step carefully in the flamingo pen.
Bottoman: See also: Tushion.***
Frognosticate: To predict a Biblical plague.
Week Four:
Filiduster: To put off something unpleasant by engaging in vigorous housework.
Bisontennial: The anniversary of the great stampede.
Galchemy: Lesbian love at first sight.
Trisqué: Meeting your husband at the door wearing nothing but snack crackers.
* * *
*My favorite of Robert’s so far is “Boodwire: Hidden microphone in a French woman’s bedroom.”
**Props to Kir for coming up with this word (the def is mine, and the combo is one of my favorites so far).
***Thanks to Amy for hashing this one out with me in the hot tub at the pool!
Love, love, love these! Coincidentally, my son’s teacher just taught a punctuation lesson by sharing with them some of the humorous things that can happen when you misuse commas. You’ve probably heard of the sign outside the Panda enclosure at the zoo that reads “eats, shoots and leaves.” Or the demise of your elderly relative when you say “Let’s eat grandpa!” instead of “Let’s eat, grandpa!” For the latter (death by misuse of commas) B invented the word commacide!
I seem to be going through a manateen phase myself, although I’m much past my teen years…