Chambers Gigglossary

I was leafing through a little book, Chambers Gigglossary, in the bookshop today. It is devoted to the humorous definitions that Chambers Dictionary is famous for, plus 'definitions' sent in by members of the public. I've mentioned Chambers' definitions in a previous post, but here are some more:

grammaticaster: a piddling grammarian

lady-killer: a man who is, or fancies himself, irresistible to women

pock-pudding: a Scottish contemptuous name for a mere Englishman

tracksuit: a loose, warm suit intended to be worn by athletes when warming up or training, but sometimes worn by others in an error of judgement

Some of the humorous definitions sent in by readers (and in Gigglossary, but not Chambers Dictionary) are:

bagpipes: an instrument of torture used by the Scots against other nations

colloquialism: a formal word for an informal word

DIY: an abbreviation for Damage-it-yourself

instruction manual: an explanation of how to use something written in a way that is easily understood only by the author

monosyllable: a contradiction in terms

oxymoron: a stupid cow

paranoia: why do you want to know?

recursive: see recursive

teacher: a person who talks to himself for a living

There are more examples here on Chambers' website. You can submit your own humorous definitions too.

Comments

[Fran]

I love the 'teacher' one! It got me thinking. Can I offer:

Odyssey - a journey everyone claims they've been on but they've only done half of it

linguist - someone who likes to lingwer over words

pupil - a role in which the main challenge is to make sure one's computer and printer never work on Sunday nights

blong - a collection of regular postings of a protracted nature

[Virtual Linguist]

Those are great, Fran. I look forward to seeing them in the next edition of Chambers Gigglossary!