Self-Contradicting Words

Words whose meanings contradict one another:

  • BILL (“monetary note” and “statement of debt”)
  • BUCKLE (“to secure” and “to collapse”)
  • CLEAVE (“to separate” and “to bring together”)
  • DOWNHILL (“progressively easier” and “progressively worse”)
  • DUST (“to add dust” and “to remove dust”)
  • FAST (“quick-moving” and “immobile”)
  • GARNISH (“to add to” and “to take from”)
  • MODEL (“archetype” and “copy”)
  • OVERSIGHT (“attention” and “inattention”)
  • PEER (“noble” and “person of equal rank”)
  • PUZZLE (“to pose a problem” and “to try to solve a problem”)
  • SANCTION (“to permit” and “to restrict”)

And TABLE means both “to present for consideration” and “to remove from consideration.”

| Language

Expense Account

The German Bundestag has 614 members, but its official Web site lists 615. That’s because Jakob Maria Mierscheid doesn’t exist — he was invented in the 1920s by Weimar Social Democrats to avoid paying restaurant bills.

Like George P. Burdell, another nonexistent bon vivant, Mierscheid has quite a resume. He served as deputy chairman of the Committee for Small and Medium Sized Businesses in 1981 and 1982, and in 1983 he published a demonstration of the correlation between federal election results and West German industrial production.

Presumably he also goes out to lunch a lot.

| Hoaxes · Society

Garganta

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Model.village.arp.750pix.jpg

Fed on radioactive turnips, Rose Newman of Bourton-on-the-Water, England,
grew to the astonishing height of 50 feet.

Just kidding. Bourton-on-the-Water contains a 1:10 scale model of itself.

And, yes, the scale model contains a scale model.

| Oddities

Take Your Pick

Frivolous political parties around the world and their campaign promises:

  • Denmark’s Union of Conscientiously Work-Shy Elements promised tailwinds on all cycle paths.
  • Hungary’s Two-Tailed Dog Party promised eternal life, world peace, one work day per week, two sunsets a day, smaller gravitation, and low taxes.
  • Sweden’s Donald Duck Party promised wider sidewalks and “free alcohol to the people.”
  • England’s Death, Dungeons and Taxes Party promised the reintroduction of hanging, the annexation of France, and the reduction of the school leaving age to 9.
  • America’s Guns and Dope Party would replace one-third of Congress with ostriches.

And Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus all have Beer Lovers’ Parties.

“Politicians are the same all over,” said Nikita Khrushchev. “They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.”

| Quotations · Society