Verboticisms

Created by: skeeterzirra

Pronunciation: Koo-ni-dat

Sentence: My parents have all these cunidat reels called super-eight.

Etymology: cuniform data

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Created by: Nosila

Pronunciation: bay ta blok

Sentence: When Sammy tried to put his dvd in Grandpa's old video machine, he found it was in betablock mode. No wonder Grandpa had heart trouble. Sammy was confused and felt like someone travelling back in a time machine...Grandpa's videos were on Beta, his music on 8 Track, his movies were on 8 mm, his tv was in black & white and his telephone had a rotary dial. No wonder Grandpa was so old...it took him ages to get in contact with the outside world!

Etymology: Beta (old video format, before VHS) & Beta Blocker (any of various drugs used in treating hypertension or arrhythmia; decreases force and rate of heart contractions by blocking beta-adrenergic receptors of the autonomic nervous system)

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Created by: purpleartichokes

Pronunciation: mim-ee-oh-gaff

Sentence: Humphrey inserted the floppy disk and cranked the handle, but to know avail. He sighed in disappointment, realizing that he may never know what a graph of a mimeo looked like. His mimeograph was nothing more than a mimeogaffe.

Etymology: mimeograph, gaffe

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COMMENTS:

how sad but how true - A young guest tried to use an old rotary dial phone at our house and just kept pushing their fingers into the holes to no avail - Jabberwocky, 2008-03-14: 14:06:00

Another walk down byte-gone ways! Great word play! Very nicely done! - silveryaspen, 2008-03-14: 18:34:00

Sadly, I used a mimeograph and no one knows what I'm talking about (as usual). - Nosila, 2008-03-14: 23:02:00

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Created by: artr

Pronunciation: ōldfashənäləjē

Sentence: Denise loves to keep up with the newest technology. Her checkbook doesn’t always allow her to keep up. You can imagine her excitement when the prices started dropping on one of her favorite data-storage devices. Now she is in the dumps because zip drives have joined the world of oldfashionology.

Etymology: old-fashioned (no longer current or common; not modern) + technology (the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes)

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Created by: wayoffcenter

Pronunciation: äbsəlētist

Sentence: Tommy feels that much of the best technology has been passed over because the majority of people are too dumb to appreciate it. He is a self-avowed obsoletist. Blackberry? iPhone? Forget them. He has his PDA and he's sticking with it.

Etymology: obsolete: no longer produced or used; out of date + elitist: a person who believes that a system or society should be ruled or dominated by an elite

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COMMENTS:

Fun stuff! - artr, 2009-01-07: 06:39:00

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Created by: Nosila

Pronunciation: pas say im pur fect

Sentence: Young Billy adored his grandfather and loved it when the old geezer told him stories about the passéimperfect. He knew his grandpa made this stuff up, but he loved to hear about the good old days anyway and in particular about the ancient tools they used. He regaled Billy with yarns about how his phone had numbers that went round and round when he stuck his finger in the holes for each set of numbers. Grandpa also told him about watching tv shows on the one channel in black & white and for some reason you needed a rabbit's ears to see the tiny picture better. (As if!) He also told him of cooking without using a microwave (yeah, right!) and buying big blocks of ice to keep everything in the fridge cold (you've got to be kidding!). That crazy Grandpa, he told Billy that a log on was something you put on a bonfire and that a link was something you put on your sleeves to keep the cuffs closed. He said a password was something you spoke into a grill on a door to get into a speak-easy (must be some kind of spellcheck for voice actioned computers?) Billy loved the really old things that Grandpa gave him. Like most boys his age, he loved dinosaurs. He was so excited today, because Grandpa was coming over and bringing him a thesaurus...he couldn't wait to play with it!

Etymology: passé (out of fashion) & past imperfect (grammar: tense imperfect refers to an action that is uncompleted or abandoned)

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COMMENTS:

Rrrawr! Oh no, here comes the fierce Thesaurus Rex!... That's hilarious. - Tigger, 2008-03-14: 03:09:00

All that was makes me curious about what is to come! Great etymology ... conveys the way passages from the old ... lead to the knew ... growing, evolving, better and better ... perfecting! A Perfectly wonderful sentence and word! - silveryaspen, 2008-03-14: 17:08:00

Thanks, Tigger & silveryaspen. I always thought the best name for the Toronto NBA Team was TorontoSaurus Wrecks...but no one would listen... - Nosila, 2008-03-14: 23:16:00

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Created by: FreakyDeak

Pronunciation: Pro-toe-gram

Sentence: Still using your brain to think? It's such a protogram. Try google, you Neanderthal.

Etymology: Proto(prefix meaning earliest form of something) + Program

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Created by: Nosila

Pronunciation: ree ty ro sar

Sentence: When Mary reached 65, she knew it was time to stop working. She had become a retirosaur. She no longer spoke the language of her younger boss and co-workers. She could remember working the teletype, a comptometer and her ancient Underwood typewriter had served her well. She had used a dictionary, a thesaurus, knew how to spell; remember people's names; compose grammatically correct sentences and do complex mathematical computations in her head. The staff loved her, but found her to be a quaint walking, talking museum on legs. Yes, Mary had worked for 45 years at the same place and the reason she had been kept on this long was because she knew how to do each job well and she knew where all the bodies were buried!

Etymology: Retire (Withdraw from circulation or participation; cease to work) & Dinosaur (any of numerous extinct terrestrial reptiles of the Mesozoic era)

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COMMENTS:

"Retirosaur!" Just like the Little Red Hen, let Mary say "Not I!" It's sad we can't make the good things that are in the past, more a part of the good things in the present ... glean the best of the both! - silveryaspen, 2009-01-07: 15:48:00

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Created by: Nosila

Pronunciation: gram pa fone

Sentence: The boys loved going to visit Grampa, because he had so many neat old-fashioned gizmos that they had never seen before. One of their favourites was the grampaphone. It was a gramophone that played very old songs on 78 rpm records. It needed wound up all the time. Their parents were amazed that the boys knew the words to very old vaudeville, burlesque and music hall songs. They knew all the songs recorded by Al Jolson, Gracie Fields, George Formby, Edith Piaf, Rudy Vallee and Fats Waller among others. Their folks knew they spent too much time on the grampaphone, when they said goodbye to their teacher, Mrs. Jones. They would croon to her, "Toot-Toot-Tootsie goodbye, Toot-Toot-Tootsie, don't cry..."

Etymology: Gramophone (an antique record player; the sound of the vibrating needle is amplified acoustically) & Grampa (your father or mother's father; the affectionate term for a grandfather)

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COMMENTS:

A Grampaphone could also be that odd black plastic device that plugs into the wall and works like a cell with an anchor. - artr, 2010-05-24: 07:54:00

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Created by: Stevenson0

Pronunciation: tik/stingkt

Sentence: The inability of any of today's computers to read the written data on the old large floppy disks have made them textinct.

Etymology: TEXTINCT - noun - from TEXT + EXTINCT - T+EXTINCT = TEXTINCT

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