Category Archives: dictionary

June 28, 2020 · 1:48 am

New words to live by: “Sycophantification”

Time, once again (though it has been a while), for New words to live by. This is a word or phrase not currently in use in the U.S. English lexicon, but might need to be considered. Other words, such as slug monkey, obsurd, crumpify, subsus, flib, congressed, tantrumony, and others, can be found by clicking on the tags below. Today’s New Word is created by taking two nouns and creating a new word. In this instance, the new word does not borrow from the names of the old words, but from their definitions. Without further waiting here is the new word: sycophantification.

OLD WORDS
Sycophant, n. fawning parasite; a self-seeking, servile flatterer.

-ification, suffix. forming nouns of action usually from verbs ending in -fy (such as simplification from simplify ). In this case making a noun of action from a noun.

NEW WORD
Sycophantification, n. make a class or position of sycophants. Turning a place into one filled with yes men, boot lickers, fawning parasites. Example. The sycophantification of an office. Installing toadies in every position.

Used in a sentence: Noun. The White House is the land of sycophantification. Nobody who isn’t a servile flatterer or fawning parasite lasts long in his or her position.

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July 14, 2012 · 9:05 am

The Devil’s Dictionary: Abdomen

In our continuing quest to revisit a classic, or even a curiosity from the past and see how relevant it is, we continue with The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Originally published in newspaper installments from 1881 until 1906. You might be surprised how current many of the entries are.

For example, here is a definition for Abdomen. The Old definition is Bierce’s. The New definition is mine or somebody else contemporary. From time to time, just as it was originally published, we will come back to The Devil’s Dictionary, for a look at it then and how it applies today. Click on Devil’s Dictionary in the tags below to bring up the other entries.

OLD DEFINITION
Abdomen, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore the know not. If woman had a free hand in the world’s marketing, the race would become graminivorous.

NEW DEFINITION
In this case, it’s more of an augmentation of the original definition than revision of the original.

Augmentation 1:
Beer Belly, n. The temple of the god Stomach after a regular and continual ingesting of liquid graminivorous forms. These graminivorous forms include ale, pale ale, stout, larger, and lite forms of these and other similar liquids.

Augmentation 2:
Six-Pack Abs, n. The flip side (so to say) of the beer belly in which attempts are made to make the temple appear like the packaging of the liquid graminivorous content and not the liquid graminivorous contents themselves.

[Editor’s note: In case you are wondering, graminivorous is a word and it is a word that Bierce used in his definition. I did not add it to show off. It means: feeding or subsisting on grass.]

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