Verboticisms

Created by: mweinmann

Pronunciation: speek - ur - tweek - ur

Sentence: Margerie could not listen to anyone without "tweaking" their statements so that the speaker's grammar and voice inflection were correct in the context of the sentence. Her family and friends became loath to even talk to her for fear of being corrected. Other than being a speakertweaker, Margerie's biggest compulsion was playing Verbotomy every day and checking her scores every hour.

Etymology: Speaker (someone who expresses in language; someone who talks) + tweaker (a person who tweaks something) tweak (fine-tune: adjust finely)

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COMMENTS:

nice one! - galwaywegian, 2009-01-16: 11:41:00

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| Comments and Points

Created by: bookowl

Pronunciation: par/si/drone/ee/us

Sentence: The Latin teacher was so parsidroneous that he put the class to sleep.

Etymology: parse + drone + parsimonious

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COMMENTS:

Excellent. The first time I read it I thought it was 'pardidronerous,' which brought to mind 'grammonerous.' Shame one gets only one submission, eh? - stache, 2008-03-26: 10:44:00

er, 'parSidronerous.' - stache, 2008-03-26: 10:45:00

You parsed 100/100! - OZZIEBOB, 2008-03-26: 17:43:00

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| Comments and Points

Created by: verbherder

Pronunciation: gram-ahrs-hohl

Sentence: I don't mind someone pointing out an error in speech every now and then, but that grammarsehole did it throughout the entire meeting and we couldn't get anything accomplished.

Etymology:

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COMMENTS:

I like it! Too bad I already used my votes... - readerwriter, 2009-01-16: 12:24:00

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| Comments and Points

Created by: silveryaspen

Pronunciation: Rek ti fy

Sentence: Killsay was excellent at morphemes and constituents. He was born a Grammar. Killsay was very in tense, and always in the accusative. He was overly generous in sharing his grammar. Killsay would restruckture the speecch of any one. No was was safe from his guydance (guidance) ... shuffling his feet, waving his finger, tweaking your verbose, nitpicking through one's words ... he would wrectify everything said.

Etymology: RECTIFY, WRECK. RECTIFY - correct, amend, revise. WRECK - to damage and destroy with too much revision. --- (Morphemes are basic word-building units. Constituents are sentence-building units. They are true grammatical words, not verbotomies.) Killsay Grammar is a pun on actor Kelsey Grammer, star of the tv show Frasier.

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COMMENTS:

Bet she had a bad rectutation.... - Mustang, 2009-01-16: 04:17:00

After she irritates enough people, she might turn a wreckluse. - mweinmann, 2009-01-16: 08:12:00

Thank you for the clever comments. But Killsay is a he ... not a she! Men are guilty of doing this, too! - silveryaspen, 2009-01-16: 10:03:00

nice - Jabberwocky, 2009-01-16: 16:16:00

Killsay Grammar...love it! - Nosila, 2009-01-16: 20:43:00

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| Comments and Points

Created by: petaj

Pronunciation: gram-a-nag

Sentence: Grandma's grammarnaggery had galled her grandchildren greatly so they gratefully agreed to greet Grandpa and give up Grandma's gramma pie. (Australian version of pumpkin pie)

Etymology: grammar + nag

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COMMENTS:

good gracious - gallons of gs - Jabberwocky, 2008-03-26: 11:43:00

Gorgeous! - Jamagra, 2008-03-26: 15:09:00

Good one. - OZZIEBOB, 2008-03-26: 17:25:00

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| Comments and Points

Created by: artr

Pronunciation: gramerkraker

Sentence: James hates e-mail, not for its intrusive nature but the way most people use it. Worse yet is text messaging. (He refuses to call it texting) When someone sends him a message, he replies with a corrected edition of the original message with commas, hyphens, spelling and proper verb tense. He won't respond to the content until the originator sends it back in its corrected form. His friends have started calling him a grammarcracker. He is amused by the term but won't actually type it because it isn't in the dictionary.

Etymology: grammar (the whole system and structure of a language) + cracker (a fine example of something)

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COMMENTS:

I h8 txtn 2. - wayoffcenter, 2009-01-16: 04:46:00

And a very nice play on graham crackers! - silveryaspen, 2009-01-16: 10:12:00

Show them no Grammercy! - Nosila, 2009-01-16: 20:44:00

Those purists can really contaminate our ebonics. - metrohumanx, 2009-01-21: 15:35:00

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| Comments and Points

Created by: Postdog

Pronunciation: Ped - anti - ling - wist

Sentence:

Etymology:

| Comments and Points

Created by: werdnurd

Pronunciation: gra-mud-jun (n)

Sentence: Feeling slighted by the improper use of the word good, the gramudgeon could not help but interject: "You mean well."

Etymology: grammar - the way the sentences of a language are constructed; morphology and syntax. curmudgeon - a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.

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COMMENTS:

Very good blend! - OZZIEBOB, 2008-03-26: 17:50:00

Hey, your 'Gramudgeon' should hook up with my 'Linguistickler'. - Tigger, 2008-03-26: 22:32:00

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| Comments and Points

Created by: Tigger

Pronunciation: /ling-gwi-STIK-ler/

Sentence: Sarah's customer, Mr. Vern Acular stopped by her office to tell her that the business proposal she'd sent him to review was "written very good," and that he was hoping to award her company the contract for his account. "Well," she said, after a cringe and a long pause. After another long pause Vern asked, "Well what?" confused by her pained expression and stiff body language. She couldn't hold it in any longer — Sarah was an obsessive linguistickler, and all her careful writing was wasted on this ignorant buffoon. "It was written very WELL!" she said. "You said it was written very GOOD' but you should've said WELL instead of GOOD," she explained. Vern thought about that for a few moments and then said, "Alright then, I thought the writing was very WELL."

Etymology: Linguistic - consisting of or related to language (from Latin, lingua "language, tongue") + Stickler - a person who insists on something unyieldingly (from Old English, stihan "to arrange order")

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COMMENTS:

Love your story, Tigger, especially since I have dealt with guys like him myself...you really don't have to make this stuff up, do you? - Nosila, 2008-03-26: 02:00:00

It took me a minute to get the Vern Acular ref. heehee :) Hilarious he came back and said the writing was well. I hope he did that on purpose out of spite! - diyan627, 2008-03-26: 02:32:00

Wonderful word. I tend to suspect the percentage of linguisticklers among verbotomists is higher than that in the general population. - stache, 2008-03-26: 11:26:00

I tend to think of verbotomists as being lingui-ticklers - Jabberwocky, 2008-03-26: 11:47:00

Ahhhhh, I posted a similar word w/out seeing yours first. Your sentence, however, is much better than mine. You've got my vote. - werdnurd, 2008-03-26: 15:17:00

Love yore sentence and word! Someone said, "A grammarian is one who thinks it is more important to write correctly than to write well". - OZZIEBOB, 2008-03-26: 17:16:00

So true, Bob and stache. I bet everyone here has their pet-peeves about bad grammar though, things that just make you cringe. - Tigger, 2008-03-26: 21:43:00

I love "lingui-ticklers" too, Jabberwocky. That's an excellent verbotomy for 'verbotomists'. - Tigger, 2008-03-26: 21:46:00

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| Comments and Points

Created by: OZZIEBOB

Pronunciation: wurd-PREE-fekt

Sentence: "But this is madness. I am trying to stop this company from becoming a grammatical graveyard! Don't you realize it concerns every person in this country - and, moreover, in the greater part of the world to speak English perfectly" Behind his back, in a low voice, someone murmured, " Oh no, has someone split an infinitive again." Things were becoming tense as Bob, flushing crimson, started to leave the room. After few moments, someone said, "Hope that's the last of "Verndracula" for a while. "Verndracula", "Dipthong", "Cretaphor" and, quasi-officially, "The Wordprefect" were but a few pejoratives for Bob, whose habitual correcting of even the slightest grammatical error was driving his colleagues to demential declensia. However, they agreed, that it was a "critical period" in the company's history, and that it would be a "double negative" if they sat there tangentiality, and did nothing to put a "glottal stop" to his psycholinguistic punishment. Firstly they started to mutilate plurals, one boomerang became two "beemearang"; one cuckoo was two "cuckee". And, in an attempt, to render this onomatopedant almost apoplexic: 'Boo-hoo' became "bee-hee" and "boom" became "beem" Reaching for the mountain top of malapropisms, they uttered howlers such as a "let's not talk about tattoo subjects". Gradually, Bob began to realize that he had lost all "soap in his hole" when he began to slip, more and more, into spoonerisms - of course, that should be speenerism.

Etymology: Blend of WORD & PREFECT: School boy,especially in English Grammar schools, with responsibility for th discipline and "proper" behavior of other students.

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COMMENTS:

There's nothing like clouding up the waters with a good mixed metaphor, ya know! - arrrteest, 2008-03-26: 12:04:00

excellent sentence - Jabberwocky, 2008-03-26: 14:00:00

So many hysterical stories today! Very amusing. - Tigger, 2008-03-26: 22:29:00

Loved it...it left me almost comma-tose. Period. Doesn't a dipthong sound like the kind of low-cut bathing suit that Borat wore? Isn't a beemerang a carphone call for a yuppie? Cheers!(Is the singular form of that a cher?) - Nosila, 2008-03-26: 22:40:00

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