It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s still pretty clever.
A forwarded e-mail going around the Internet purports to list the winning entries in a contest called the “Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational,” where Washington Post readers supposedly took any word from the dictionary, altered it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and wrote a new definition.
My search of the Washington Post Web site turned up nothing called a “Mensa Invitational,” my first clue that this email is less than legitimate.
I looked further.
Strangely, my favorite fact-check Web site snopes.com does not have an entry for it.
(Snopes probably should, as I’ve learned that this email has reached near urban-myth status.)
A Google search turned up many, many blogs that have posted this “contest,” which is dated either 2005 or 2006, depending on which version you read, as if it were genuine.
But a post on www.vegsource.com pointed out some of the e-mail’s fallacies, including the unlikelihood that Mensa would lend its name to an “invitational,” and the fact that several entries break the one-letter change rule, which of course the Washington Post never would’ve allowed if it in fact had a one-letter change rule.
According to the newspaper’s online archives, some of these nonsensical words actually did appear in the Washington Post in a 1998 weekly column call the Style Invitational.
So the e-mail is fake, but it’s still pretty funny. And the people who created these words may not be genius members of Mensa, but they’re still pretty smart.
And the “winners” are:
Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting lucky.
Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
Karmageddon: It’s when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right?
And then like the Earth explodes and it’s like a serious bummer.
Decafalon: The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Glibido: All talk and no action.
Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Arachnoleptic fit: The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at 3 in the morning and cannot be cast out.
Caterpallor: The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
Suckotash: A dish consisting of corn, lima beans and tofu.
Hindprint: Indentation made by a couch potato.
Nazigator: An overbearing member of your carpool.
Guillozine: A magazine for executioners.
(Just for the record, I love tofu.)
nnn
Emily Ford covers the N.C. Research Campus for the Salisbury Post.