Definitions by Chuck Hastings

up your alley 

Means, "right in line with your tastes and/or abilities."

Sometimes "down your alley." Means the same thing.

No connection with "up your (anything else)."

If you're a numbers person, very precise, very logical, then cost accounting is right up your allwy.

up your alley by Chuck Hastings July 11, 2003

zorch 

A verb: To mess something up to the point of unusability, or even to destroy it.

I hadn't saved my file, and my computer crash totally zorched the term paper that I was writing.

zorch by Chuck Hastings June 29, 2003

nebbish

Originally a Hebrew word, popularized in English by the cartoonist Herb Gardner. A `sad sack,' a loser, a person who can't make any thing or any situation work right for him or her; unassertive, shy, timid. Reference: `The Joys of Yiddish,' by Leo Rosten. His definition is "An innocuous, ineffectual, weak, helpless or hapless unfortunate." There are other spellings also.

The poor little fourth-grader was such a nebbish that she peed in her pants, rather than speaking up and asking the teacher for a hall pass to go to the bathroom.

nebbish by Chuck Hastings June 29, 2003

gonif

A Hebrew/Yiddish word, often used (and spelled various ways) in English; particularly used in southern California. There is no exact English equivalent word; `operator' is maybe the closest. A gonif operates on the shadowy borders of illegality and/or impropriety, and gets away with it, and is not quite an outright crook. The word seems to combine proper moral disapproval with sneaking admiration. Reference: 'The Joys of Yiddish,' by Leo Rosten.

Seymour was an accomplished and clever gonif. He could con birds out of trees, and could figure out how to game any bureaucratic system within a few minutes.

gonif by Chuck Hastings June 29, 2003

honcho 

A person in charge of some group or of some function, usually a male person. A Japanese word, often mistakenly thought to be of Spanish origin. In Japanese it's a term for a small-time yakuza gangster in charge of just a few underlings, but the underworld flavor has mostly been lost as the word has been adopted into English.

He quickly got promoted to be the head marketing honcho in that dot.com startup.

honcho by Chuck Hastings June 29, 2003

mugwump 

A political fence-sitter, who won't come down on either side of the fence and tries to have things both ways. Originally an Algonquin Indian word; used in American p[olitics for more than a century.

He was a mugwump about supporting the Iraq war. He had his mug on one side of that issue, and his wump on the other.

mugwump by Chuck Hastings June 29, 2003

fundamentalist 

One who believes that principles are more important than people, or results.

Osama bin Laden
Tomas Torquemada
Jerry Falwell
Meir Kahane
Ted Unabomber

One can be a fundamentalist in any religious or secular creed.

fundamentalist by Chuck Hastings June 28, 2003