Xah's A Word A Day — the making of belles-lettres

A: It just seems odd that the ditsy secretary gets the closing shot of the movie.
B: Hey - that “ditsy” secretary reads Dostoyevsky!:P ..

… has gone to jail for committing unmentionable acts of moral turpitude.

any personage who could order a whore to his room and then let her in to do god-knows-what should not be worrying about the quality of female at this point.

cat in heat does caterwaul. It's quite something to hear.

At the rehearsals, Jobs huddled with his coterie of sycophants…

synonyms: entourage, retinue

I think it's mildly unfortunate that the KDE camp considered itself so cornered that it felt compelled to issue miffed and wounded-sounding position statements that it will continue to fight the good fight.

Microsoft miffed AOL yesterday, because a feature in MSN Messenger software lets users communicate with those using AOL's Instant Messenger.

imprecation is not to be confused with impregnation, or insemination, or implication.

In Breggin's [a psychatrist] case, his opponents found a doozy: the doctor once wrote approvingly of sexual relations between children.

Not that there aren't gal assholes . . . but they tend to be fewer in number . . . but when you find one they can be real doozies.

me: do you want to play a round of game?
her: game OK, i don't want to have to win tho'
her: no cutthroat tactics

[2004. online chat with a cutthroat woman]

The real secret to such planning is patience. The investor must plan for the long term and consider short term profits a windfall.

How Portal insiders reaped huge windfall

we were a nation of FARMERS before we became commuters and consumers. WINDFALL is the fruit which falls naturally from the tree and wasn't picked.

SAN FRANCISCO (Billboard) - With a possible billion-dollar windfall at stake, U.S. music companies are eagerly awaiting the full-blown development of the stateside ringtone market.

recently i was waylaid by a woman. I was going to say i was accosted by her, though that doesn't sound right. Man accosts woman, but from woman to man, we don't say accost by the nature of human animal's sexual sociology. Waylaid doesn't mean accost, but is a similar word that means ambush. Ambush is often used in military contexts, while waylaid is fitting between the sexes.

quite a number of people these days would like this nice, milky vision of culture in witch it's all rather improving, and leads us all to this nice little pie-in-the-sky moral heaven, where nobody's nasty to anybody else. But the only things is that literature, culture, art isn't put there to have that pleasant, normative effect.

At the beginning of this process, your cat could just step into the box; later he began jumping up into it, until at some point he probably started jumping up onto the toilet seat first and stepping into the box from there. You've been diligently keeping the lid up and the seat down, of course, so by now your cat is thoroughly familiar with tromping around on the open toilet.

patrons will be impressed by the snazzy multimedia presentations, such as an interactive computer map of early 20th century cathouses, with nice little Zagat-style reviews.

I started studying words to prep for the SAT, but I've been addicted ever since. I have learned most of the words you list, but recently I've questioned the need for such sesquipedalian terms.

pusillanimous is a high-flown word for cowardly, fearful, or timid. Don't spell it pussilanimous.

ok bye. let me know how it all turns out. send email. i want one LOVE-SICK email per day

Great website. Usually I can't stand insult humour, but yours is exceptional. You should be on tv in the USA to replace the present pablum.