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LANGUAGE HUMOR AT ITS FINEST
Making yourself more proficient in English need not be a drag. You can actually speed up the learning process and make it fun by generously lacing it with humor—but preferably the best that the English language can offer.
In this new section, apart from giving a fixed slot to our weekly “In a Lighter Vein” pop-out humor piece in the Forum homepage, we have put together the finest of those weekly humor pop-ups since the Forum started. The best of them—collected from various sources on the web and sent in by friends—are all here, posted in the Forum under the following headings: Wordplay, On the Job, Student and School Life, and Miscellany.
So if you missed any of the best of the Forum’s weekly humor pop-ups, you can enjoy and savor them again and again here—and better still, share them with your friends!
Click here to go to the board (requires registration to post)
A Cavalcade of Daffynitions
Let’s define a “daffynition” as a twisted and humorous—and at best epigrammatic* and sometimes devastatingly truthful—definition of an English word. Now see if the daffynitions in the following collection indeed merit that definition:
abdication — Giving up on stomach exercises.
***
adult — A person who has stopped growing up and starts growing out.
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anarchy - Exception to the rule.
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ashtray — Pig Latin for a piece of trash.
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atheist — A believer in non-belief.
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autopsy — A dying practice.
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bachelor — A guy who never finds out how many faults he has.
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bankers — The rooters of all evil.
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bargain — Something that makes you think you’re saving money when you’re spending it.
***
bore — Someopne who, when you ask how he is, tells you.
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bureaucracy — Capital punishment.
***
cannibal — Someone who is fed up with people.
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card — Someone in a play suit.
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chef — A cook with a large hat and a head to fill it.
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chickens — Animals you can eat before they are born and after they are dead.
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church — Where the world is seen through stained-glass.
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committee — A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.
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consciousness — That nightmare between sleeps.
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custody — The last battle in a marriage.
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cynics — Ignorant people who are ruining the county.
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death — The only escape from taxes.
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dictionary — The only place where divorce comes before marriage.
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dignify — A way to make the hole you’re in look good.
***
diplomat — A person who tells you to get lost and you can’t wait to get started.
***
download — A crucial step in making a pillow.
***
dust — Mud with the juice squeezed out.
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esoteric — A word known only by esoteric people.
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expression — Non-stop talking.
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finance — The artful application of arithmetic.
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flabbergasted — Reaction to seeing oneself naked in a mirror.
***
flashlight — A case for holding dead batteries.
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fortune teller — A bank employee who only deals with large accounts.
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gossip — An independent news source.
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government — A necessity we could do without.
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hanging — A suspended sentence.
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hangover — The wrath of grapes.
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headache — A cheap and effective contraceptive.
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heirloom — A dead giveaway.
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honeymoon — When a married couple moon their honeys.
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hunch — A gut feeling you get during lunch.
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hypochondriac — Someone who won’t let well enough alone.
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inertia — Resisting arrest.
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jury — A panel of twelve untrained in law who are asked their legal opinion.
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kernel — A unit of corny.
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lawyer — Deceiver, as in “lawyer, lawyer, pants on foyer.”
***
life — A sexually transmitted terminal disease.
***
lightheaded — Halo effect.
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locomotive — Insanity plea.
***
lottery — A tax on people who are lousy at math.
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lymph — To walk with a lisp.
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manicurist — Someone who makes money hand over fist.
***
mosquito — An insect that makes flies tolerable.
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normal — 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.
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optimist — A person who smells smoke and gets out the marshmallows.
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pessimist — Someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
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petroleum — Floor covering for dog and cat owners.
***
politician — One who shakes your hand before elections and your confidence after.
***
politics — Where truth lies.
***
predestination — Doomed from the start.
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relentless — Not allowing someone to borrow something a second time.
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religion — Where you find prophets and non-profits (and for-profits as well).
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secret — News you tell to one person at a time.
***
Semite — Big-truck driver.
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shin — What you use to find furniture in the dark.
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sleep — That fleeting moment that ends alarmingly.
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slumber — Salvaged wood from condemned house.
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stick — A boomerang that doesn’t come back.
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statistics — Where the truth lies.
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suburbia — Where they cut down trees and put in streets named after them.
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teenager — One whose hang-ups do not include clothes.
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tomorrow — A great labor saving device of today.
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tornado — An ending with a twist.
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truth — Something that doesn’t lie in the open.
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volunteer — Take on work that makes no cents.
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wealth — Envied ownership.
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yawn — An honest opinion openly expressed.
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*epigrammatic – a terse, sage, or witty and often paradoxical saying
—From Jim Wegryn's “A Barrelful of Words”
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