Saturday, April 30, 2011

Legerdemain

leg-er-de-main (lĕjˌər-də-mānˈ)

1. Deceitful cleverness, especially with regards to implied magic.
Through a bit of legerdemain, some hatmaker turned Smurfette's vagina into a hat!

Synonyms: artfulness, conjuring, fallacious adroitness, hocus-pocus, lies, magic, manipulation, slight of hand, trickery.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Onomatopoeia

on-o-mat-o-poe-ia (ŏnˌə-mătˌə-pēˈə, -mäˌtə-)

noun
1. A word that imitates the sound of the thing it describes.
Simon Soundman likes onomatopoeia too much!

Synonyms: yes.

Obstreperous

ob-strep-er-ous (əb-strĕpər-əs)

adjective
1. Loud and disapproving.
Pam sent me obstreperous messages, when she noticed that none of her favorite words were defined in my blog today.

Synonyms: bitchy, blusterous, boisterous, booming, clamorous, disorderly, loud, loudly fractious, out of hand, piercing, raising Cain, rambunctious, riotous, roaring, roof-raising, rowdy, screaming, strepitous, tumultous, unmanageable, unruly, uproarious, vociferous, wild.

Bombastic

bom-bas-tic (bŏmăsˈtĭk)

adjective
1. Important or respectable sounding with little substance or actual meaning.
Shaggy is bombastic; his beats are fantastic, so romantic...*

Synonyms: inflated, stilted, pompous, lofty, over-filled, grandiloquent, high-flown.

* Mr. Bean can also be rather bombastic.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Sophistry

soph-is-try (sŏfˈĭ-strē)

noun
1. What political leaders do when backed into a corner.
2. A plausible, but misleading, argument.
Five years of Harper's sophistry is enough!

Synonyms: a collection of plausible lies.

Murderabilia

murd-er-a-bil-i-a* (mûrˈdər-ə-bĭlˈē-ə, -bĭlˈyə)

noun
1. Like memorabalia, but the historical event that the collectibles come from is a murder.
"In the gruesome world of "murderabilia," collectors can buy everything from Timothy McVeigh's death certificate to serial killer wall calendars or a lock of Charles Manson's hair in the shape of a swastika." - ABC 20/20

Synonyms: a clear sign that [insert name of dealer/collector here] is un-dateable.

* People have asked whether some of the words in my blog are real or not and I promise that this, like all of the other words, is a real word. It's creepy, but it's real!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Ubiquitous

u-biq-uit-ous (yo͞o-bĭkˈwĭ-təs)

adjective
1. Being or seeming to be everywhere at once.
Descriptions of their travels make the monkey and Johnny Cash two of the most ubiquitous characters of our time.

Synonyms: all-over, everywhere, omnipresent, pervasive, ubiquitary, universal, wall-to-wall.