Abulence “aa-boo-lence” – I’ve heard of the am-buh-lam (ebonics for Ambulance), but never until recently had I heard of an abulence. Now I know saying the entire word can be tedious, am-byoo-lence, but if we’re going to start dropping slabbles from words just for convenience could we at least start with less important words? I mean, think about if you’re injured and cry out for an abulence and nobody responds because they have no idea what you are talking about and think you’re a crazy person? [Injured bicyclist] - “Help!! I need an abulence, someone help me!” [Passing couple] “Can you believe that honey? Crackheads in our neighborhood, unbelievable, I hope it rains on that guy.” Submitted by my sis Deb.
Hyper-Down – A classic from parents and older siblings alike indicating you are being too hyper and need to settle down or calm down. This is often utilized when settle and calm down have become ineffective and you are hoping that by conjoining these two words you might access the calming portion of the subjects nervous system. Alas, for some of us no amount of verbal persuasion could temper the affect of six packs of pop-rocks. Submitted by my sis Deb.
Hypocritical Oath – A student in one of my wife’s online critical thinking courses used this in a paper about the death penalty. Unfortunately, it was not a play on words. It would have been great if it was, something like “Doctors who administer the lethal doses have apparently set aside the hypocritical oath they took.” I would award bonus points for that myself. Sadly, without knowledge of this unintentional pun their only bonus is getting on this blog. Submitted by the wife.
Fasterness – If you’ve read some of the earlier posts on this blog you might remember the “communistic trifecta” where a co-worker said something to the affect of “supposably (1) there’s this communistic (2) influence in the book of Revelations(3! That's it folks! She's done it! The communistic trifecta!)”. Well, just this week she uttered another blog worthy sentence something along the lines of “In the future I’d like to accomplish that task with more fasterness.” Fasterness? That’s not even remotely close to being a real word. People say supposably and Revelations all the time, but fasterness? What is the antonym, slowerness? “I should probably drive with more slowerness to avoid getting into an accident.” See the level of rediculosity? Submitted by Amanda R.
Aquaintenences – Earlier we discussed the trimming of syllables from words with abulence and here we have a minister telling his congregation to reach out to their aquain-ten-nen-ces, clearly a case of the word cloak. When you’re not sure about a word, how to pronounce it, or perhaps what its plural form is, you just sprinkle in a little something extra to “cloak” your misgivings. Heck, you may even get it right. In this case, it was wrong, and making things worse, he used it about seven times. The veil was rent, the way opened, and light shined on this word cloak. Submitted by Gene K.
People will come outta the woodworks – Woodworks are wood-like surfaces that spray water whenever you stare at them for a very long time. No but seriously, there’s no such thing. An idiom, “come out of the woodwork” means to emerge from obscurity or a place of seclusion. To come outta the woodworks, well, I guess if you had a giant wood structure or sculpture that people could go into or out of then you could use this statement and it would be correct, otherwise, drop the “s” people.
Everything in the kitchen sink – Another idiom that, apparently used with more fasterness than their intellect could handle, was just slightly modified with an “in” where a “but” should be, completely and utterly modifying the meaning. Unfortunately, this new idiom is understood to mean the dishes, the food pieces, some bacteria, and a few cleaning utensils.
Over Empowered – Co-workers, an endless stream of nonsense. This was uttered in the following context, no further anecdote is required. “The pickles totally over-empower this sandwich.”
