We explain Style Conversational Week 1290 And honor the two decades of Bob Levey’s neologism contest (and one of its winners) Bob Levey, the beloved, avuncular metro columnist who ran a neologism contest each mont h for more than 20 years. This week’s Style Invitational honors one of the Invite’s — and Bob’s — biggest winners. (Julia Ewan/The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow July 26, 2018 at 2:46 p.m. EDT With this week’s contest we celebrate the inevitable summiting of Style Invitational Peak 1500 by Tom Witte, who first appeared in the Invite in the final entry of the results of Week 7 — May 9, 1993 — with a name for a rock band: And last: Give Me The Damned T-Shirt (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Tom eventually got his Loser T-shirt, many of them, along with hundreds of sundry other Loser crappieces over the next 25-plus years, as he entered a long list of entries for virtually every one of the next 1,282 weeks. And while he declined my generous offer to have him do my job for free and judge a contest, Tom didn’t object to having some contest in his honor — one that he might or might not know about right now, because just yesterday he took off on one of his three-week solo mountain-climbing trips of a series of peaks in California. And Tom, who recently retired from a career in mapping things for the government, doesn’t even have GPS — or a cellphone. Which is why he didn’t get a chance this week to compile a list of his favorite Style Invitational entries — especially the racy ones — in time for this column. So sometime after he gets back in mid-August, we’ll have some Risqué Business here at the Convo. For now, let’s turn to this week’s contest, which I’m repeating for the first time since my first weeks as Empress. Once a month from 1983 to his retirement in January 2004 — 250 times over a span almost as long as the Invitational — the writer of the daily, family-friendly column “Bob Levey’s Washington” would describe some situation or phenomenon and ask for a good word for it. Then he’d run a long list of submissions from his huge readership, choosing a winner whom he’d then take out to lunch. (Everyone else just got ink.) And each week, Bob would painstakingly explain the winning entry, which was often a portmanteau of two words. His first winner was “troublem,” which, he noted, combined “trouble” and “problem.” So Levey’s column and the Invitational both ran in The Post for a decade, with utterly no coordination between the two contests. Even the lists of winners hardly overlapped, except for a Trump-size handful of various Invite Losers among Bob’s neologists — and, month after month, Tom Witte. Meanwhile, my predecessor, the anonymous Czar of The Style Invitational, ran lots of neologism contests that were decidedly not family-friendly, and eventually featured an “Uncle of The Style Invitational” who would choose a favorite entry each week — and explain it. I deposed the Czar in December 2003; a few weeks later, the Empress introduced Week 542 like this: Week 542: Discombobulate Us /Jan. 25, 2004/ /*A buffet table where the food is doled out so sloppily that it ends up mished into an oleaginous mess resembling the contents of someone’s stomach: Smeargasbord (a neat pairing of “smear” and “smorgasbord”).* / /Friday marked the retirement of a Washington Post institution: nice-guy columnist Bob Levey, who for more than 20 years, five days a week, represented The Post’s public-spirited, helpful, friendly, avuncular side with his fundraising drives for Children’s Hospital and Send a Kid to Camp; his action-line phone calls on behalf of readers who’d been given the runaround; and his monthly neologism contest, in which Bob would come up with some familiar, funny object or situation that didn’t yet have a name. For example, here’s an actual winner from November 2001, by Susan Eaton of Taos, N.M.: The reluctance of ketchup to come out of the bottle: Redicence. As Bob noted: “What a tangy merger of ‘red’ and ‘reticence’!” / /As a salute to that last aspect of his job — not to mention a blatant ploy to draw his regular contestants over to The Style Invitational — we offer This Week’s Contest: Come up with both an object/situation and a neologism for it. But here is the catch: Bob, in addition to being a nice guy, is a tasteful guy. A grown-up guy. Your neologism should be something that Bob would never have stooped to print in his column, though it also cannot be something The Washington Post won’t print at all. Be sure to explain your entry./ /First-prize winner receives the Inker, the official Style Invitational Trophy. First runner-up wins an exceptionally rare, vintage “The Uncle Loves Me” Style Invitational T-shirt in an unlovely lime green./ ---- In 2018, in Week 1290, when the week’s results include “dudenda,” “tizza” and “Russy-whipped” — all in the print paper, no less — I didn’t see a need to remind the Loser community that we welcome edgy humor. So back in 2004: Four weeks later, I reported this: --- *Report from Week 542*, in which we pay homage to newly retired Post columnist Bob Levey by corrupting his monthly neologism contest into our own All Tasteless Edition. In tribute and with a certain curiosity, The Empress, after choosing her winners, sent Bob a list of all the entries below and asked if he’d make his own choice. He responded quickly with his picks, enthusing, “These entries are so good that it makes a newly-retired neologism guy wanna come ba-a-a-a-ack.” And his winner? It was — we swear to you — the same entry that The Empress had chosen. Which goes to show that if Bob hadn’t had to be so goshdarn honorable over there on the comics pages, his own contest might have been just a bit spicier. *Fourth runner-up:* While some kids are having sex at younger and younger ages, others are actually waiting longer. Someone who waits a really long time is called a cherryatric. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) *Third runner-up:* What do you call it when you explain your well-timed indecent exposure as a “wardrobe malfunction”? How about niplomacy? Or siliconniving. (Steve Fahey, Kensington; Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) *Second runner-up:* The little serenade your stomach performs after a midnight refrigerator raid: It’s eine schweine Nachtmusik. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.) *First runner-up, the winner of a genuine “The Uncle Loves Me” T-shirt*: Too much plastic surgery on a woman past a certain age produces an unintended, sort of cadaverous effect: Call it sepulchritude. (Tom Kreitzberg, Silver Spring) *And the winner of the Inker: *It’s sad to say that there are some guys around who’d ogle a breastfeeding mother. You’d call a somebody like this a La Lecher. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) Bob also singled out for special mention this one by Tom Witte, who wins only his admiration, since The Style Invitational has no budget for fancy lunches: Some guys believe that a woman’s most important side is behind her. These guys could be called cannoisseurs. *Honorable Mentions:* When you put the plastic top on your morning cup of takeout, and coffee spurts out of the little hole in the lid, it’s called premature ecafulation. (Michelle Harvey, Takoma Park) People who are on fire jump about and twitch so! This frenzied, comical movement might be called the inflammenco. (Tom Witte) A newspaper’s economizing by chopping dozens of veteran journalists off its payroll: costration. (That, of course, is a mix of “cost” and “ration.”) (John O’Byrne, Dublin) You consider terrorists to be evil, of course, yet one of them catches your eye in the newspaper, because, well, he’s a great looker. You’d call this man a jihottie. (Tom Witte) You realize you’ve been spending many of your working hours mulling over how best to stick it to your golden-boy co-worker. You might call this scruminating. (Tom Kreitzberg) You’re a down-on-your-luck student in 19th-century Russia. Your planned murder of the landlady was going swimmingly. But then her sister walked in on you at just the wrong moment, and darn it, you had to take her out, too. This pesky frustration is called D’oh! svidanya. (Mary Ann Henningsen, Hayward, Calif.) You step on the elevator and push the fourth-floor button. Before the doors close, an incredibly attractive woman rushes in and presses Floor 20. Your unfortunate early departure could be called Otis interruptus. (Chris Doyle) The look on a guy’s face when he learns how his girlfriend has been managing to buy up that closetful of Manolos: whorror. (Virginia Fairchild, Alpharetta, Ga.) Phone sex is phone sex, but cell phone sex is Nookia. (Chris Doyle) Your husband brought home a copy of the Kama Sutra and is determined to try all 153 positions over the next five months: Get ready for the shtup du jour. (Chris Doyle) That line of rubberneckers driving slowly by the scene of a traffic accident hoping to see some gore? It’s an abattour. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) You have been doing so well at hiding your disgusting habits from the new sweetie, until inevitably, you horrify her by hawking up half a lung right onto the sidewalk. This unfortunate but decisive way to end a promising relationship is a Waterloogie. (Milo Sauer, Fairfax) The first time you use Viagra and your libido is, well, raised from the dead, you experience tombescence. (Chris Doyle) Someone who has money up the wazoo could be said to suffer from Hummerhoids. (Deb Parrish, Fairfax Station) If you’re really sharp at predicting when that special woman in your life will be in a bad mood, you could be said to be acumenstrual. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) You’re on your tiptoes, eyeing the cover of Hustler on the top row of the magazine rack, when a woman from church walks up. You quickly grab a copy of the Economist. This maneuver is called highbrowsing. (Chris Doyle) Surely you’ve experienced that common feeling that the Earth will be destroyed by eucalyptus-devouring pseudo-ursine demons. Well, now there’s a name for it: apokoalypse. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) Submitting a huge, stinking mess of entries to The Style Invitational and claiming them as your own when, in fact, you copied and pasted them en masse from Web sites like unwords.com is plagiarrhea, a totally original combo of “plagiarism” and “huge, stinking mess.” (Mark Hagenau, Derry, N.H.) Some guys care only about one trait in a woman, and they’re very upfront about it. These guys could be called aficionudders. Or chesthetes. (Tom Witte) That irritation caused by envy of other Style Invitational entries, leaving the victim scratching his head and lamenting, “Why didn’t I think of that?” That’s what we call a case of joke itch. (Jeff Brechlin) Nobody, but nobody is more boring than a preachy ex-alcoholic. This kind of person is called an AA-hol[ic]. (Tom Witte) You know how people throw around terms from Eastern religion and pop psych to sound smarter than they are? The term for that is Upanischadenfreude. It’s a mix of “Upanishad,” a foreign word that probably means something, and “schadenfreude,” which is another one. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) *And last: *The Czar is gone and the Empress, being a lady, won’t accept the gross vulgarities that have been submitted in the past. Her intellectual level could be termed: non compost mentis (as in not allowing poop jokes). (Marleen May, Rockville) [As you can see, we are indeed in a new era.] *DISTURBING THE P’S*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1286* /*Non-inking headline submitted by both Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich/ I clearly went overboard with the ink in this neologism contest to replace one or more P’s in a word or term with any other letter — but there was just so much good stuff. I’m glad, though, that I broadened the initial idea of changing P’s to B’s, because there was a ton of repetition. Many, many entries with “bro-” to replace a word beginning “pro-” — First Offender Jessica Garber tops the list of them with her good example of “broductivity” — and “par” to “bar-,” for which I ran three varied entries. Even this broadly, the contest did /not / allow for other letters to be changed /to/ P’s. Which blew the funny entry from the envious (but also inking) David Young: “Jesse Prankovich: 20 people in Michigan who collaborate on the Style Invitational.” I did compile an especially long list of entries I labeled “BD,” as in “needs a better definition.” For example, “slabstick” was defined as “morbid humor used by coroners, funeral directors et al.” A definition of something as a joke cries out, to be a joke, to have a sample ... joke. Like “Party like a mortician and grab a cold one.” At least once I’ve compiled a list of such high-potential words and put them out to the collective mind of Loserdom for a contest in itself; maybe I’ll do that again. This time, I had dozens. Another thing that wasn’t going to work was basing your joke on a misspelling of the original, e.g., “Architelego: Designer of buildings using Danish plastic bricks”; changing “archipelAgo” to “architelago” wouldn’t work so well, I’m afraid. Also, leaving the wrong letters for a homonym messed up the joke, at least for me: I couldn’t go for “beanut butter” to mean “honey,” for example, though it works well when spoken. It’s the eighth win but the first Lose Cannon trophy for Robert Schechter, with his unique and almost believable “tee-tee tape” that brings him to 207 blots of ink all time. I might have to ship out that big Poo Pinata out to Pasadena for Frank Osen’s second prize, or maybe he’d rather have a vintage, pre-Osen magnet from 2010 or earlier. And runners-up Larry Gray and Dave Silberstein may opt for the Grossery Bag, the Loser Mug ... or one of the numerous mint-condition Ancient Loser T-shirts regifted by Recidivist Loser Elden Carnahan. *What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood tells me that he liked lots of this week’s entries, but especially Frank’s runner-up “Muerto Rico”; Beverley Sharp’s “costpartum”; Brendan Beary’s “dudenda” and “zenultimate”; Mark Raffman’s “Hater Noster” and “Tennsylvania”; and Roy Ashley’s “holygraph.” Aaah, I’m just out of control this week on both the Invite length and right here. I’ll just add a big fat note of congratulations to Losers Chuck Smith and Ward Kay: Chuck’s “Romantic Comradery,” which drew an ample Loser contingent through a rainstorm to the NVTA One-Act Play Festival last Saturday, won for Best Production of an Original Play as well as for Best Original Script. Guess what: It was funny.