Zamboozee's definitions

Troubadour

A garlic-eating folk singer of ancient origins; as a group they generally being ones flourishing principally in the Middle Ages in the South of France writing catchy tunes and jingles in a complex metric form for court musicians.

I am not a not a man with a pointy stick wanting to poke unwilling participants in the gladiatorial games with it (and thus who do not like it up them), I am a troubadour, that is, one whom sings soppy love songs to courtly people with nothing much better to do than to listen to those who sing sad songs about unrequited love in drafty old castles by the sea.

by Zamboozee April 24, 2011

Prediscoverer

One who has discovered something important to him before someone else had done so, who had subsequently rediscovered it later on in the time-line but has inadvertently called it his own discovery accidentally on purpose by mistake.

Well, my friend, it was I, by virtue of being its prediscoverer, who first discovered relativity, although you seem to have gotten all the credit for doing so.

by Zamboozee March 30, 2011

Cretinous-Cretinalias

A Latinised-sounding high-brow word for a dumb-arsed dumb-bunny, usually being one with incipient learning difficulties, who thus is going to spend half his life in a mental funk because he can do nothing right and the other half tormented by the question of why he can do nothing right, and so, in the evolutionary stakes, is in fact a born loser.

I suppose that in describing your behaviour you’d have to be called a cretinous-cretinalias, if only because you look so confoundedly like a classic one.

by Zamboozee April 29, 2011

Dying

The ultimate state of excitement in a person’s life before a more relaxing interlude takes place; or, a very important event not to be missed by not paying enough attention to it at the time, as, in the rush someone might inadvertently miss the moment of his own death by mistake (or, what is inherent in the process of dying, the precise moment of his death), and so would find himself in a right state because he would not quite know what to do with himself next, he being dead, as he having missed paying enough attention at the time to the second most important event in his life, which would clearly be a right kettle of fish.

Die inadvertently, my word! that would be the last thing I’d do, as dying is a thing that must be done right, even if one has not particularly managed to live well.

by Zamboozee April 15, 2011

Gymnopaedia

A yearly get together promoted by a load of ancient Spartans to peruse the equality of their youth, by allowing them to parade their prowess before them through the formalization of pederastic pedagogy via the medium of dancing; or, alternatively, a kinky Greek word not actually meaning the morbid fear of gyms, but it is quite close to being so, and which originally probably came about by knowing too much about what happens to young men in them.

Let’s go to the Gymnopaedia, you and I, it’s a good day to heckle those old men ogling the young men there, and teach them a lesson they’ll never forget, and with luck we’ll be able to ogle a few young women as well while we’re at it, just for good measure.

by Zamboozee April 18, 2011

Escargatoire

A snail hostelry; being a place where snails can snuggle up to each other and relax without fear of being trodden on with the hobnail boots of a passing deity, rather like as with mankind with his relation to a country inn on coming back from a hard day’s labour.

If a thoughtless snail can have faith in where it is going when it crosses the road to get to its escargatoire, why then cannot a man, who is much smarter, cross the street without going in fear of his life? Is it because he thinks he lives in fear, or that he does not think like a snail?

by Zamboozee March 5, 2011

Bouquiniste

A French-sounding, indeed unnecessary, word for someone who deals in second hand books, and usually being ones of an obscure or pedantic nature.

Ah, the joy of travelling to Paris to find a bouquiniste, it beats popping down to Cecil Court to find an obscure book on cartography anytime.

by Zamboozee April 13, 2011