Futility Closet

mumpsimus
n. a view stubbornly held even when shown to be wrong

Euphemisms for vomiting:

• Un-eating
• Number three
• Vector-spewing
• Launching lunch
• Jackson Pollock
• Eating backwards
• Parking the tiger
• Making a crustless pizza
• Bringing it up for a vote
• Cooking up a pavement pizza
• Driving the Buick to Europe
• Alan’s psychedelic breakfast
• Yawning for the hearing impaired
• Yodelling to the porcelain megaphone
• Talking to God on the big white telephone
• Paying homage to the Irishman Huey O’Rourke
• Calling Huey (or Ralph) on the commode-a-phone

Also: horking, yakking, yarfing, yorxing. “Grasp the subject,” wrote Cato, “the words will follow.”

snobographer
n. one who describes or writes about snobs

The Anagrammy Awards is a monthly anagram competition. March winners:

• THE CRIME INVESTIGATOR = HE INTERROGATES VICTIM
• A TRAINED SUSHI CHEF = HE’S A TUNA-FISH DICER
• ASTEROID THREATS = DISASTER TO EARTH

My favorite from the hall of fame — this:

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: THAT IS THE QUESTION; WHETHER ‘TIS NOBLER IN THE MIND TO SUFFER THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE

can be rearranged to spell

IN ONE OF THE BARD’S BEST-THOUGHT-OF TRAGEDIES, OUR INSISTENT HERO, HAMLET, QUERIES ON TWO FRONTS ABOUT HOW LIFE TURNS ROTTEN.

Can’t beat that.

uglyography
n. bad handwriting; poor spelling

opiniaster
n. one who obstinately holds to an opinion

afterwit
n. knowledge gained too late to do any good

English As She Is Spoke is the worst Portuguese-English phrasebook ever written — and the best. The Portuguese authors apparently didn’t speak English themselves, so they used a Portuguese-French dictionary mechanically to translate a French-English phrasebook. The results are sublime:

• “Take out the live coals with the hand of the cat.”
• “A bad arrangement is better than a process.”
• “He has fond the knuckle of the business.”
• “Friendship of a child is water into a basket.”
• “The stone as roll not heap up not foam.”
• “To craunch the marmoset.”

Mark Twain wrote, “Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect.”

Autological words describe themselves:

• pentasyllabic
• adjectival
• descriptive
• uninformative
• English
• pronounceable
• confusionful
• wee

Heterological words don’t:

• abbreviated
• adverb
• purple
• carcinogenic
• plural
• phonetic
• misspelled

So is heterological a heterological word?

jentacular
adj. pertaining to breakfast