Wednesday 29 December 2010

challenge: a droubble of forgotten words

oh, boy- this is fun!  further droubble challenge from Liz (see previous posts here and here for explanations of drabbles and droubbles respectively, if you missed it)    this time, even more source words.  the list is mine.  i gave her the first part, and then she asked for some more so, evil cow that i am, i trotted on over to http://www.savethewords.org/ (where you can adopt sadly neglected words and love them and use them and save them from extinction) and picked a few of the little darlings at random.

thing is, i forgot to write down what they mean, so when i came back online a couple of days later, it was to find that Liz had had a bit of a problem with some of the definitions.  even the all-powerful Google couldn't find some of them.  despite counting this as a sort of obscure victory over The Man (albeit a hollow one, since this means that some of those words are even more forgotten than i realized), i thought i'd better send a few explanations.  first, though, i had to go find them again on the website. (if you go have a look, you'll see why this caused one or two problems for me).  eventually, i did find the original words and their meanings.  and so, without further ado, here is the list, and the ensuing droubble (i've included unusual word definitions at the end):

orca / furtive / seminal / lozenge / treetop / hasten / gleimous / tortiloquy  / adimpleate / nidifice / ducenarious / aquabib

The furtive sucking on a lozenge did nothing to reduce his gleimous state. His head felt the size of an orca, and he stared gloomily at the ducenarious used tissues he'd managed to adimpleate with his bodily secretions over the past few days. In his semi- catatonic state, he'd been reduced to dozing in front of the television, floating in and out of consciousness whilst "Parliament Today" droned on before him. From his nidifice on the sofa, he'd observed some seminal tortiloquy and had been impressed, until he realised that this was what politicians did all day, every day.
The worst thing about all of this was not the aching joints, the phlegm, or the lack of energy. It was the fact that he'd been turned into an aquabib during the holiday drinking season. The abstinence was killing him. He wanted to be singing raucousy in the streets, or swinging from a frozen city-centre treetop. Instead, he was confined to the house, whilst his mates sent him texts and pictures of all the fun they were having. Grimacing, he drank more orange juice in an attempt to hasten his recovery so he could go and raise hell at New Year.

gleimous (full of phlegm) / tortiloquy (dishonest or immoral speech - talking around stuff) / adimpleate (to fill up) / nidifice (a nest) / ducenarious (pertaining to two hundred) / aquabib (water-drinker)

.

1 comment:

  1. -jaw drops-

    Okay, I have nothing. yet. I was out till late last night and didn't get your message until this morning, which, when I think about it, is probably when you sent it my time. >< freaking time zones.

    All right. We'll see what I scrounge up! Thank you so much for the definitions! <3

    ReplyDelete