Jester's Condescending English Dictionary - A
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
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| A.A.A.A.A. | n | An organization for drunks who drive. |
| A hypothetical paradox | n | What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet? -- Tom Galloway |
| A Law of Computer Programming | n | Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find that programmers cannot write in English. |
| Abaloney | n | Shellfish nonsense. |
| Abbott's Admonitions | n | (1) If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know. (2) If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question. -- Charles Abbot, dean, University of Virginia |
| Absent | adj | Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered. |
| Absentee | n | (1) A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" (2) A missing golf accessory. |
| Abstainer | n | A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Absurdity | n | A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Abundance | n | A local hop usually staged in a barn. |
| Academy | n | A modern school where football is taught. See also Institute |
| Acceptance testing | n | An unsuccessful attempt to find bugs. |
| Accident | n | A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better. -- Foolish Dictionary |
| Accordion | n | A bagpipe with pleats. |
| Accuracy | n | The vice of being right |
| Achilles' Biological Findings | pl, n | (1) If a child looks like his father, that's heredity. If he looks like a neighbor, that's environment. (2) A lot of time has been wasted arguing over what came first -- the chicken or the egg. It was undoubtedly the rooster. |
| Acme | n | Pimples on the face running towards the top. |
| Acquaintance | n | A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when the object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| ADA | n | Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA awareness. -- "Datamation", January 15, 1984 |
| Adam's Law | n | (1) Women don't know what they want; they don't like what they have got. (2) Men know very well what they want; having got it, they begin to lose interest. |
| Adamant | n | The first insect. |
| Adieu | n | Hymie Finklestein. |
| Adler's Distinction | n | Language is all that separates us from the lower animals, and from the bureaucrats. |
| Admiration | n | Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Adolescence | n | The stage between puberty and adultery. |
| Adore | v | To venerate expectantly. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Adorn | n | What comes after the darkest hour. |
| Adulatery | n | Cheating with a person who holds you in awe. |
| Adult | n | One old enough to know better. |
| Adultery | n | Putting yourself in someone else's position. |
| Advertisement | n | Something that makes you think you've longed for it for years, but have never heard of it before. |
| Advertising Rule | n | In writing a patent-medicine advertisement, first convince the reader that he has the disease he is reading about; secondly, that it is curable. |
| afterism | n | A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late. See also aphorism -- James Alexander Thom |
| Afternoon | n | That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the morning. |
| Age | n | That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| Agnes' Law | n | Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of. |
| Aibohphobia | n | The fear of palindromes. |
| air | n | A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Air Force Inertia Axiom | n | Consistency is always easier to defend than correctness. |
| Alaska | n | A prelude to "No." |
| Albrecht's Law | n | Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well-being. |
| Alden's Laws | n | (1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause of pregnancy. (2) Always be backlit. (3) Sit down whenever possible. |
| algorithm | n | Trendy dance for hip programmers. |
| alimony | n | (1) Having an ex you can bank on. (2) A mistake made by two people paid for by one. |
| All new | adj | Parts not interchangeable with previous model. |
| Allen's Axiom | n | When all else fails, read the instructions. |
| Alliance | n | In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Alone | adj | In bad company. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Alowance | n | Less than that which is actually taken. -- Good News Week *2 |
| Alphabet | n | Not quite the full wager. |
| Ambidextrous | adj | Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Ambiguity | n | Telling the truth when you don't mean to. |
| Ambition | n | (1) An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. -- Ambrose Bierce (2) An ant crawling up an elephant's leg with rape on his mind. |
| Amoebit | n | Amoeba/rabbit cross; it can multiply and divide at the same time. |
| Andrea's Admonition | n | Never bestow profanity upon a driver who has wronged you. If you think his window is closed and he can't hear you, it isn't and he can. |
| Androphobia | n | Fear of men. |
| Anoint | v | To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Anthony's Law of Force | n | Don't force it; get a larger hammer. |
| Anthony's Law of the Workshop | n | Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner of the workshop. Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike your toes. |
| Anti-climax | n | Bore-gasm. |
| Anti-freeze | v | When you don't talk to your uncle's wife. |
| Antonym | n | The opposite of the word you're trying to think of. |
| anxiety | n | The first time you can't do it a second time. See also panic |
| Aphasia | n | Loss of speech in social scientists when asked at parties, "But of what use is your research?" |
| aphorism | n | A concise, clever statement. See also afterism -- James Alexander Thom |
| Appendix | n | A portion of a book, for which nobody yet has discovered any use. |
| Applause | n | The echo of a platitude from the mouth of a fool. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| Appointment book | n | The reference of last resort when trying to duck undesired invitations ("Gee, the soonest I can pencil you in is December, 2004"), or when trying to figure out what the hell it was you did during the past year. |
| aquadextrous | adj | Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| Arbitrary systems | n | Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing general can be said." |
| Arithmetic | n | An obscure art no longer practiced in the world's developed countries. |
| Arkansas | n | Where the men are men, so are the women and the sheep run scared. |
| Armadillo | n | To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle. |
| Armor's Axiom | n | Virtue is the failure to achieve vice. |
| Armstrong's Collection Law | n | If the check is truly in the mail, it is surely made out to someone else. |
| Arnold's Addendum | n | Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats. |
| Arnold's Laws of Documentation | n | (1) If it should exist, it doesn't. (2) If it does exist, it's out of date. (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws. |
| Arthur's Laws of Love | pl, n | (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you remind them of someone else. (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of yourself in person. |
| Aromatic | n | An automatic longbow. |
| Artery | n | The study of fine paintings. |
| Artful | n | A painting exhibition. |
| Arthur's Laws of Love | n | (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you remind them of someone else. (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of yourself in person. |
| ASCII | n | The control code for all beginning programmers and those who would become computer literate. Etymologically, the term has come down as a contraction of the often-repeated phrase "ascii and you shall receive." -- Robb Russon |
| Ass | n | The masculine of "lass". |
| Atlanta | n | An entire city surrounded by an airport. |
| Auction | n | A gyp off the old block. |
| audophile | n | Someone who listens to the equipment instead of the music. |
| Australia | n | Girt by sea and p****d by lunchtime |
| Authentic | adj | Indubitably true, in somebody's opinion. |
| Autobiography | n | The car's logbook. |
| Automatic Shift | n | When the driver moves closer to his girlfriend. |
| Automobile | n | A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians. |
| Avail | n | Helpful for ugly women. |
| Avoiding Oversell, Law of | n | When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse. |
| Awestruck | v | Being hit with a paddle. |
