Each year the Washington Post's Style Invitational asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing only one letter and supply a new definition.
Here are the 2002 winners:
Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
Giraffiti: Vandalism 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.
Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit).
Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
Glibido: All talk and no action.
Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
And, the winner of the Washington Post's Style Invitational:
Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an @ssh*le.
And some others, words spelt right but definitions not normal:
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightie.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Semantics (n.), pranks conducted by young men studying for the priesthood, including such things as gluing the pages of the priest's prayer book together just before vespers.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts