Word Play: Morphing Existing Words

 

The Washington Post's "Style Invitational" asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.


Acme: a generic skin disease.

Adulatery: cheating on your wife with a much younger woman who holds you in awe.

Antifun gal: a prude.

Auto-da-feh: the extermination of heretics via drowning in a vat of pus.

Burglesque: a poorly planned break-in. (See: Watergate)

Coiterie: a very VERY close-knit group.

Conratemps: the resentment permanent workers feel toward the fill-in workers.

Deifenestration: to throw all talk of God out the window.

DIOS: the one true operating system.

Doltergeist: a spirit that decides to haunt someplace stupid, such as your septic tank.

Dopeler effect: the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Eunouch: the pain of castration.

Emasculathe: a tool for castration.

Foreploy: any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of obtaining sex.

Fortissimoe: the musical moment produced when someone serially slaps the faces of the first-violin section.

Genitaliar: an image-enhancing object that can be carried in a man's front pocket.

Giraffiti: vandalism spray-painted very, very high, such as the famous "Surrender Dorothy" on the Beltway overpass.

Glibido: all talk and no action.

Guillozine: a magazine for executioners.

Hindkerchief: really expensive toilet paper; toilet paper at Buckingham palace.

Hindprint: indentation made by a couch potato.

Hipatitis: terminal coolness.

Hozone: the area around 14th street.

Impotience: eager anticipation by men awaiting their Viagra prescription.

Inoculatte: to take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Intaxication: euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like a serious bummer.

Osteopornosis: a degenerate disease.

Reintarnation: coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Sarchasm: the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it.

Stupfather: Woody Allen.

Suckotash: a dish consisting of corn, lima beans and tofu.

Taterfamilias: the head of the Potato Head family.

Tatyr: a lecherous Mr. Potato Head.

Vaseball: a game of catch played by children in the living room.

Whitetater: a political hot potato.

Writer's tramp: a woman who practices poetic licentiousness.