Jester's Condescending English Dictionary - I
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
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| IBM | n | [International Business Machines Corp.] Also known as Itty Bitty Machines or The Lawyer's Friend. The dominant force in computer marketing, having supplied worldwide some 75% of all known hardware and 10% of all software. To protect itself from the litigious envy of less successful organizations, such as the US government, IBM employs 68% of all known ex-Attorneys' General. Alledged to stand for: I Beg Mercy I Blame Microsoft I Bought Macintosh I've been mislead I've Been Moved Idiots Become Managers Idiots Bewilderment Machine Idiots Bought Me Idiots Buy More Illustrative of Bad Marketing Immense Bins of Money Immense Bucket of Manure Imperialism By Marketing Impossible to Buy Machine Impractical But Marketable In a Befuddled Manner In Business for Money Incredible Bunch of Muffinheads Incredibly Big Machine Industry's Biggest Mistake Insipid Brainless Monster Insolense Breeds Mediocrity Installed By Masochists Institute of Broken Minds Intensely Boring Machines International Beurocracy Merchants International Brotherhood of Mercenaries Involuntary Bowel Movement It Beats Mattel It Boggles the Mind It's Better Manually It's Broken Mummy Itty-Bitty Machines It may be slow, but it's hard to use. |
| IBM's original motto | n | Cogito ergo vendo; vendo ergo sum. |
| IBM Pollyanna Principle | n | Machines should work. People should think. |
| Idiot | n | A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| idiot box | n | The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| idleness | n | Leisure gone to seed. |
| Idolise | v | Eyes that refuse to look at anything. |
| ignisecond | n | The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!" -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| ignorance | n | When you don't know anything, and someone else finds out. |
| Iles's Law | n | There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it. Neither will Iles. |
| Imbesi's Law with Freeman's Extension | n | In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty; but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean. |
| Immutability, Three Rules of | pl, n | (1) If a tarpaulin can flap, it will. (2) If a small boy can get dirty, he will. (3) If a teenager can go out, he will. |
| Impartial | adj | Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Impossible | adj | (1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve; (2) I can't be bothered; (3) God can't be bothered. Meaning (3) may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck. -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab" |
| impotent loser | n | Someone who can't even get his hopes up. |
| inbox | n | A catch basin for everything you don't want to deal with, but are afraid to throw away. |
| incentive program | n | The system of long and short-term rewards that a corporation uses to motivate its people. Still, despite all the experimentation with profit sharing, stock options, and the like, the most effective incentive program to date seems to be "Do a good job and you get to keep it." |
| Incest | n | (1) Relatively boring. See also necrophilia (1) (2) Sibling revelry; a sport the whole family can enjoy. |
| Income | n | INCOME: What you have to make first, because you can't make it last. |
| Incumbent | n | Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| index | n | Alphabetical list of words of no possible interest where an alphabetical list of subjects with references ought to be. |
| Infancy | n | The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| Infatuation | n | When you're in love, there's a lump in your throat. When you're infatuated, there's a lump in your pants. |
| Infidel | n | In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| Information Center | n | A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require. |
| Information Processing | v | What you call data processing when people are so disgusted with it they won't let it be discussed in their presence. |
| Ingrate | n | A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of indigestion. |
| ink | n | A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. -- H.L. Mencken |
| innovate | v | To annoy people. |
| Innuendo | n | An Italian suppository. |
| insecurity | n | Finding out that you've mispronounced for years one of your favorite words. Realizing halfway through a joke that you're telling it to the person who told it to you. |
| Institute: | n | An archaic school where football is not taught. See also Academy |
| intaxication | n | The feeling you get upon receiving a rebate from the Tax man that is subsequently quashed when you realise that it was your money in the first place. |
| interest | n | What borrowers pay, lenders receive, stockholders own, and burned out employees must feign. |
| Internet | n | Where dolphins go. -- Good News Week *2 |
| Interpreter | n | One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| intoxicated | adj | When you feel sophisticated without being able to pronounce it. |
| Iron Law of Distribution | n | Them that has, gets. |
| irony | n | A windy day, when, just as a beautiful girl with a short skirt approaches, dust blows in your eyes. |
| ISO applications | n | A solution in search of a problem! |
| Issawi's Laws of Progress | pl, n | The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. |
| "It's in process" | So wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless. | |
| italic | adj | Slanted to the right to emphasize key phrases. Unique to Western alphabets; in Eastern languages, the same phrases are often slanted to the left. |
