Absolution — The exercise program for priests
Avarice — The preferred snack food for sultry 1950’s movie sirens
Behoove — Motto of the ASPBH (American Society for the Prevention of Barefoot Horses)
Contrite — Greeting cards for that special prisoner in your life
Dictatorial — Instruction manual for budding despots
Eschew — The yummy new candy shaped like everyone’s favorite letter
Gangling — A magazine for the children of Bloods and Crips
Limpid — The singles club for people with no sex drive
Pedantic — A cure for restless foot condition
Penultimate — The perfect gift for the scribe who has everything
Posthaste — For when you need that letter mailed right now
Prowess — The association for transgendered prows
Sibilant — Help for insects with multiple personality disorder
Taciturn — Store that specializes in understated funerary containers
Winsome — Self-help for managing expectations in the casino
Haha, awesome! 🙂
That reminds me of “The deeper meaning of Liff”, where Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, in their role as lingo-ecologists, try to use words more resourceful. They take names for places you never need to go to and re-purpose them for experiences that no-one has a word for.
You probably know it, no?
One I like:
Lulworth (n.): Measure of conversation. A lulworth defines the amount of the length, loudness and embarrassment of a statement you make when everyone else in the room unaccountably stops talking at the same moment.
Also, I wonder: is the fact that most of the names start with a ‘P’ a coincidental cumulation? Or are P product pitches prevalently predominant?
Perhaps the predominance of ‘P’ product pitches is Perlin purposely parlaying a peculiar (purported) penchant for populist pandering. In particular, parsing puns primarily per plosive potential.
This reminds me of those competitions that New York Magazine used to run. Cute!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_(magazine)#Puzzles_and_competitions
http://whateveritwasiwasagainstit.blogspot.com/2005/05/new-york-magazine-competitions.html
Ah, they didn’t include my favorite of Mary Ann Madden’s wonderful competitions — the week when the challenge was to come up with the best mistranslation into English of a foreign phrase.
As I recall, the winners that week were:
Original phrase: Un fait accompli
Translation: A greek salad with everything on it
Original phrase: Une bonne idée
Translation: Easter
*pondering* …
“Plosive Persuades”, the new “Sex Sells”? 🙂
(Proving my point about your amazing memory—see, it really does serve you well most of the time 🙂 )
I ordered the 3 books of collected New York Magazine Competitions (used, since they are out of print). It’s been so long since I’ve even thought about them—I was a teenager and my mother had a subscription. I’m looking forward to some light reading!
Awesome!!! 🙂 One of my favorites is “What I should have said / What I said”:
That’s actually the title of one of the books (“Maybe He’s Dead”) and the first entry.