Jester's Condescending English Dictionary - W
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
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| Walters' Rule | n | All airline flights depart from the gates most distant from the center of the terminal. Nobody ever had a reservation on a plane that left Gate 1. |
| Waranty | n | If it breaks, both halves are yours. |
| WASP | n | Someone who gets out of the shower to take a p**s. |
| Watership Down | You've read the book. You've seen the movie. Now eat the stew! | |
| Watson's Law | n | The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it. |
| "We'll look into it" | By the time the wheels make a full turn, we assume you will have forgotten about it, too. | |
| weapon | n | An index of the lack of development of a culture. |
| Wedding | n | A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing and nothing undertakes to become supportable. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| Weed's Axiom | n | Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one in which you are least interested and say nothing about the other. |
| Weiler's Law | n | Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. |
| Weinberg's First Law | n | Progress is only made on alternate Fridays. |
| Weinberg's Principle | n | An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy. |
| Weinberg's Second Law | n | If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. |
| Weiner's Law of Libraries | n | There are no answers, only cross references. |
| well-adjusted | adj | The ability to play bridge or golf as if they were games. |
| Welsh Rarebit | n | A Cardiff virgin. |
| Westheimer's Discovery | n | A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library. |
| WetDream | n | (1) A snore-gasm. (2) Overnight sensation. |
| Wethern's Law | n | Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. |
| When asked the definition of "pi" | The Mathematician: Pi is the number expressing the relationship between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. The Physicist: Pi is 3.1415927, plus or minus 0.000000005. The Engineer: Pi is about 3. | |
| Whistler's Law | n | You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge. |
| White's Statement | n | Don't lose heart! Owen's Commentary on White's Statement: ...they might want to cut it out... Byrd's Addition to Owen's Commentary: ...and they want to avoid a lengthy search. |
| Whitehead's Law | n | The obvious answer is always overlooked. |
| Wiker's Law | n | Government expands to absorb revenue and then some. |
| Widows 95 | n | Women who don't have an e-male. |
| Wilcox's Law | n | A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants. |
| William Safire's Rules for Writers | pl, n | Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives. |
| Williams and Holland's Law | n | If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods. |
| Wilner's Observation | n | All conversations with a potato should be conducted in private. |
| Wisdom | n | Knowing what to do with what you know. |
| Wit | n | The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery ... by leaving it out. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| wok | n | Something to thwow at a wabbit. |
| wolf | n | A man who knows all the ankles. |
| woman | n | An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. -- Bierce |
| Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection | n | (1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it. (2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete. (3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2) (4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator. (5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless. -- Rich Kulawiec |
| Woodward's Law | n | A theory is better than its explanation. |
| Woolsey-Swanson Rule | n | People would rather live with a problem they cannot solve rather than accept a solution they cannot understand. |
| Word Processer | n | The guy who decides if a word should be added to the language. |
| work | n | The blessed respite from screaming kids and soap operas for which you actually get paid. |
| Work Rule | n | Leave of Absence (for an Operation): We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are, and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we bargained for. |
| World Wide Web | n | Sticky substance which clings to the computer terminals of teenage boys. -- Good News Week *2 |
| Worst Month of the Year | February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible. -- Steve Rubenstein | |
| Worst Vegetable of the Year | The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next year. -- Steve Rubenstein | |
| write-protect tab | n | A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the momentary inconvenience. -- Robb Russon |
| WYSIWIG | adj | What you see is fake hair. |
