Today’s word of the day in the Urban Dictionary is; Bluewalls. It’s defined as "The female equivalent of blue balls". By a wise ass calling himself Buzz A. If you fall for this one, you’ll be as naive as I was, checking out what the hell blue balls are.
Urban Dictionary’s number one definition of Blue balls turned out to be "the excrutiating pain a man receives when his balls swell to the size of coconuts because of lack of sex, unfinished bjs, and just not cummin when he knows he should."
Spelling mistake courtesy of Mr Buzz. Thank god he (assuming it’s a he) did not feel the need to go into similar detail on the female parts.
Knowing just about where to leave off and when to fill in might be the bread and butter of this dictionary. There’s not all that much self advertising on the site. But there must be a reason why it’s called the Urban Dictionary.
What’s more interesting is that you’ll care less about general linguistic observational trends once you’ve turned a few pages of the Urban Dictionary, which comes out in print too. The slang definitions are simply hilarious and will spice up your lingo within minutes of browsing.
Take this: Posse is Your crew, your hommies, a group of friends, people who may or may not have your back
As in: "Me an’ my posse gonna hang tonite."
And a Gravy train is A job where no work is involved. To get paid for doing nothing. Standing around at work and talking all day.
As in: "Look over there, Brian is riding the gravy train again."
Fun dictionaries are perfect gift ideas. To my mind, a perfect gift is something that has you inspired and that has you dwell on your inspiration for longer than that excuse of all excuses, a bunch of flowers, will hang around in your living room.
I have submitted my own definition for the phrase Perfect Gift (just because I WANT someone to give me it); Alternative to flowers, but with odor of similar calibre. Editors are reviewing it right now… It’s a tame one, I admit. Perhaps I should volunteer my other idea too: Urban Cheeze – Where Blue And Yellow Collide To Convince You Grey’s A Competitive Color. Eh – it’s not my day.
The Non Verbal Dictionary is written by people that are similarly quirky. It is far from comprehensive, and mostly phrases rather than words are defined, but the listed items are researched by anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, linguists, psychiatrists, psychologists, semioticians. Value for money is beside the point come what may, because reading the entries is designed to give you new ideas about everyday concepts rather than about providing you with knitty gritty information an sich.
The writers have studied human communication from a scientific point of view, and that is very apparent from this nifty little work. It’s like sitting at a table, chatting with your favorite scientist, reading the topics.
Which are all pretty much to do with gestures and consumer products. Those that have trademark registrations are identified with the ® symbol. In this sense, it is a gloriously similar example to Kunkelfruit, a wiki-based project that describes how products are made.
Many of the entries of the Verbal Dictionary will strike you as highly unusual and in this sense it is at the opposite end of the spectrum as your Iconic America high street jumble sale.
Take this entry for instance, explaining the Clever Hans phenomenon: "As primates we are highly responsive to nonverbal cues, and thus susceptible to the "Clever Hans" phenomenon", the dictionary informs us. Then, the little anecdote attached to the phenomenon is told:
Once upon a 19th-century time, there lived a world-famous horse named Clever Hans, who displayed amazing mathematical ability. If somebody asked him to add, say, five plus seven, Hans would faithfully stomp 12 times, astounding all present. For years, puzzled scientists were baffled by how the animal could add and subtract. One Oskar Pfungst solved the riddle at last. According to Pfungst, Clever Hans looked closely at his human audience for subtle body cues [e.g., of the eyes and head] telling him when to stop tapping his hoof. Tiny kinesic signs alone sufficed (Givens 1981:56).
At the same time, the entry for Coca Cola reads;
Drinkable sign. 1. A sweet-tasting juice substitute with complex flavors and a carbonated "texture" which appeals to millions of consumers throughout the world. 2. A hand-held consumer product with an incredible presence in the media. 3. A refreshing beverage which encodes a vast amount of chemical information, and has a great deal to "say."
Usage: 1. As a nonverbal medium, Coca-Cola "speaks" through aroma, touch, and taste cues. To the palate, e.g., cola communicates with some of the same complex flavor molecules found in ripe fruit and broiled steak. Bubbly carbonation provides an interesting pseudo-texture to stimulate the tongue (see EXISTENTIAL CRUNCH). In tandem with the sugary taste of sucrose (a crystalline carbohydrate suggesting the fruity sweetness of fructose [for which it stands])–and aggressive advertising–its chemical messages have made Coca-Cola the most recognized brand name on earth. 2. In the modern diet, fresh-fruit drinks (e.g., orange juice) have been largely replaced
If you are looking for something more practically (read: technologically) inclined, try out Word Spy. The site’s inventors say they are devoted to lexpionage, which is the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren’t stunt words or sniglets, but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, websites etc, they contend. I bet you.
Word Spy provided an added impetus to my day by volunteering the definition of a new term: Lifestreaming n. It’s "An online record of a person’s daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person’s online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos.
—lifestreamer n.
—lifestream v., n."
I rushed to the Lifestream site, could hardly find it, but when I finally arrived at its blog, it turned out well worth the search. Lifestreaming allows you to personalize just about all your undertakings on the web. It’s a massive resume tool and THE complementary counterpart to Twitter, that’s for sure.
What’s more it will make your Facebook efforts a lot less cumbersome. Facebook allows you to upload a lifestreaming thing, enabling to share Your Entire Online Presence with the world with the touch of a few buttons.
Want more ideas for dictionaries? Guess what, unless you’re an employer interested in my soon to be Lifestream Enabled Resume, you’ll have to hang on…
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