You want room?

Pacific Northwest localism for: do you want room for cream in your coffee? Unaccountably, it seems not (as of this writing) to have spread down into Northern California.

I'd rather say 'you want room?' than 'you want fries with that?'

by Buce August 09, 2005

cigar

Sometimes, only a cigar.

Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.--Freud

by Buce August 26, 2005

rounding off money

In high school math, the stuff after the zero. In high society, a sum, no matter how large, too small to impress the person you want to impress. Cf. chump change.

He left her with $5 million, but in their crowd, that is just rounding off money.

by Buce September 25, 2005

Bathrobe investor

Guy who gets up about 11 and settles on the patio overlooking the ocean, with his laptop, (in his terry-cloth robe). His 19-year-old assistant brings him a bloody Mary. He says "thanks" in a tone of benign abstraction while he scrolls through his portfolio.

I talked to my bathrobe investors and they had never heard of this guy so I figure he must be a fake.

by Buce October 01, 2005

pandersnatch

A riff on "bandersnatch," rom Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll. Also, variously, a band, an Ed McBain novel, a satirical e-journal, etc.

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!

by buce September 05, 2005

cad and bounder

This phrase is worth noting precisely because it does not belong in this dictionary: it makes sense in a moral universe that has utterly vanished. The last "cad and bounder" died, perhaps, about 1947 (see London Daily Telegraph obituaries for further evidence).

Although they are appropriately linked, the precise meanings differ. A "cad" is one who does harm to a woman's honor or sense of self-worth as, for example, by taking her for a garden walk when he has no intention of marrying her. A "bounder" is a presumptious upstart, seemingly ignorant of, but perhaps merely indifferent to, fundamental norms of propriety.

You, sir, are a cad and a bounder.

A cad perhaps, but no bounder. My family goes back to William I.

by Buce August 09, 2005

nfm

Well, I thought it stood for "no further message"--something to add to the subject line to an email, when the subject line is the email, to save the recipient the nuisance of opening the, um, message. If it does not mean this, it should.

And the mule you road in on, NFM

by Buce August 26, 2005