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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

24 New Euphemisms for Modern Conversation

The Language of Men

An illustrative (and illustrated) guide to the way we talk now. Navigate the euphemisms, the idioms, the quotations, and the curses that represent us with the tabs below.

A garden of original, soon-to-be popular metaphors, from "town halling" to "joining the Vikings" and even "emailing the goumad"

donning the fedora illustration  				 				<span class=Photo credit: MR. BINGO

Donning the fedora
1. Adorning your head with an old-fashioned hat. 2. Stepping out of your fashion comfort zone, at great risk to your image.

Wrapping khakis
1. The act of a retail-store cashier wrapping your clothing purchases with tissue paper and then adhering a sticker to the resulting parcel and then placing it carefully in a gigantic shopping bag so that you can then go home and rip off all the unnecessary accoutrement.
2. Engaging in any time-consuming and meaningless preparation.

(Like a) fat guy with a goatee
1. A large gentleman with a small beard. 2. Applying any modest adornment meant not to hide something large and unwieldy but simply to interrupt the landscape.

Cloning the mammoth
1. Attempting to replicate the woolly mammoth through DNA manipulation.
2. Taking action that, though technically feasible, is ultimately ill-advised for reasons ethical or otherwise.

Town-halling
1. Attending a public meeting between a politician and his constituents.
2. Politely asking for a forum and then rolling out the crazy. Happens frequently on second dates.

Peering over the cube
1. To look over your cube partition at work.
2. To meekly seek out the reason for a disturbance.

Gnawing the wing
1. To denude a chicken wing with your teeth.
2. To enthusiastically engage in a mundane activity to a point just beyond normal involvement.

Hiring a Russian
1. Employing a Russian national.
2. Looking to someone else to immediately and mysteriously solve a problem.

Sharing a blintz
1. Consuming a crepelike pastry filled with cheese or fruit with a companion.
2. Sharing a mutually meaningful and enjoyable activity.

Stimulus package
1. Any large-scale attempt to revive an economy.
2. Any attempt to kick-start a stagnant process, relationship, or mechanism.

Tugging the buttons
1. Pulling on shirt buttons to test for solid construction.
2. Testing the quality of anything — another person, maybe.

CHLOE folder
See here.

E-mailing the goumad
1. To communicate with your mistress via e-mail.
2. To stupidly undermine an elaborate surreptitiousness by leaving behind obvious evidence.

Skate to the box
1. In hockey, to commit a penalty and immediately and without protest move across the ice to the penalty box.
2. In life, to immediately take full responsibility for an offensive action. Useful when accidentally insulting your boss. Or not noticing your girlfriend's new haircut. Or overcooking a steak. Etc.

Stayin' on the tractor
1. Remaining seated on farm equipment.
2. When a man stays put (retired, for instance), even though he has an inclination to get back in there and see how he can mix it up one more time.

Conjugal visit
1. Means of rewarding a well-behaved prisoner by which he or she is granted privacy to engage in romantic activity.
2. Sex granted by a wife or girlfriend to a man who at the moment is undeserving of such charity.

Hand over the coals
1. Determining the readiness of a grill by holding your palm near the surface and counting the seconds before discomfort forces you to retract your hand.
2. To wait until you feel pain before deciding to act. As seen in instances of hunger, infection, love.

Splashing the vessel
1. Cocktail-making technique whereby a small amount of liquor is swirled around the inside of a cocktail glass and then removed. Also referred to as "rinsing."
2. The first stage of any romantic preparation.

Joining the Vikings
1. Signing with the Minnesota Vikings football team.
2. Making one last push in your career. One. Last. Push.

Planting roses
1. Affixing in soil any species of the genus Rosa.
2. Engaging in any home improvement that involves the installation of something specifically appealing to women, such as a painting or curtains. Or roses.

Throning
1. Sitting on a throne.
2. Hanging out in the bathroom stall a little longer than is necessary (and often with a handheld communication device) simply because you've finally found a little peace and quiet.

Wetting the sugar
1. Engaging in an exotic cocktail preparation whereby a sugar cube is dissolved in a drink.
2. Laying any kind of exotic groundwork.

A squirrel in the tomatoes
1. An otherwise adorable rodent that helps himself to the bounty of your garden.
2. Anyone whom you allow to quietly rob you of something that means more to them than it does to you.


A Few More (Define as You Like. Use at Will.)

In the wheat

Pullin' up steelheads

When the nipples hit the floor

Crap on the refrigerator

Getting weather from the weathergirl

The full Otis

Tryin' on pajamas

The largest puppy

Sniffing the maple

Spreading the mulch

Down among the badgers

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