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
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Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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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.