Rescue this word — CANTANKEROUS, as in to be difficult or irritating to deal with:
I’m cantankerous without my coffee in the morning.
Teabaggers are douchebags cantankerous when the government tries to get its hands on their Medicare.
The checkout clerks at the grocery store were understandably cantankerous during the pre-Snowpocalypse hoarding rush.
As always, try to use this word at least once in the coming week.
Thanks to various friends and hangers-on, here is a list of upcoming words to be rescued (in no particular order):
Keep your eyes peeled!
Rescue this word — PERSNICKETY, as in to be fussy about small details, or to be a snob:
The teacher was very persnickety about sentences that a preposition ended with – “That is something up with which I will not put!”
The oenophile was so persnickety that he only drank the finest wines from Oregon.
“I don’t mean to be persnickety,” said the accountant, “but that should be an 8 in the hundredths column of this DoD budget.”
As always, try to use this word at least once in the coming week.
Rescue this word — DRAGOON, as in to force into submission or compliance:
The Ugandan boy was dragooned into serving with the Lord’s Resistance Army.
George missed the staff meeting, and was dragooned into reporting back from the interagency committee.
I dragooned my son into helping me trim the hedges.
As always, try to use this word at least once in the coming week.
Rescue this word — CARNAGE , as in slaughter, butchery, massacre
June 4th is the 20th anniversary of the carnage in Tiananmen Square.
The janjaweed militias in Darfur left carnage in their wake.
The carnage from the suicide bomber in the market was horrific.
As always, try to use this word at least once in the coming week…shouldn’t be too hard to do tomorrow.
Rescue this word: MALARKEY, as in nonsense, rubbish, bullshit.
That new policy directive is pure malarkey.
Have you been listening to Cheney’s malarkey this week?
James’ comment on my French language post is a bunch of malarkey.
Use it during the next week, I dare you!
This is the first in a series of posts to rescue little-used words from their unjustified obscurity. Please feel free to make suggestions via comment for words I should add into the existing pipeline.
The word for this post: KABLOOEY , as in explode, fragment, shatter, fall apart, collapse, smash.
“The negotiations were going fine until the lawyers got involved, then everything went kablooey.”
“I had just finished icing the cake, but when I left the room, the lawyer dog jumped on it and kablooey! it was ruined.”
I encourage the audience to incorporate Rescue words into at least one sentence the week it appears.
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