Re: They Have a Word for It!

Am 08/03 00:50  Yoon Ha Lee yscrifef:

> On that note, I seem to remember some "dictionary" of words that ought
> to exist, snatches of which were read to us in 3rd grade.  I can't for
> the life of me remember the author or title, but one word I remember
> vividly was "airdo," or "the little rubber-dust fragments that come from
> an eraser when you use it" (or somesuch).  This ring a bell with anyone?
>
Was it Sniglets, the dictionary of necessary words, or some title close
to that?  I know Sniglets is right, I remember finding it in a library.
Apparently some American sketch show invited people to contribute
unorthodox words that they used.  The ones I remember are:

hempennent: the fringe of a dress caught in a cardoor.

perambulambulate: to look through the slot after one has posted the
letter.

aeropalmics: the act of holding a hand out the window of a moving car so
it rests on the air currents.

I think there were originally two or three small volumes of these
humerous descriptions.  I once saw them in a single volume ten years ago
in a bookstore, and I didn't buy it, dammit!

I have heard of the book "They Have a Word for It!" but never seen it.
The now-retired editor of the Batman Comics once recommended it in his
letters pages.

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@griffler.co.nz
alias Mungo Foxburr of Loamsdown
http://hobbit.griffler.co.nz/homepage.html

'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout?  Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!'
                                       - The Waste Land, T.S. Elliot.

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