Verboticisms

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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Created by: DaddiezGyrl

Pronunciation: cun-ing-LEEN-gwest, n. cun-ing-LEEN-gus, v. intr.

Sentence: The unmistakable voice was none other than that of the town's Cunninglinguist; there to interrupt, correct and embarrass her.

Etymology: Blend of Cunnilingus+Cunning+Linguist Cunning: showing inventiveness and skill Linguist: a specialist in linguistics and or languages Also deriving from Cunnilingus: oral stimulation; usually involving the vulva or clitoris

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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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Created by: Mustang

Pronunciation: werd - zill - uh

Sentence: Brunhilda was a stickler for grammar and had become a veritable wordzilla at parsing every one of Geoffrey's utterings.

Etymology: Blend of word and Godzilla

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COMMENTS:

I parse on this one. Good blend. - OZZIEBOB, 2008-03-26: 17:39:00

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Created by: artr

Pronunciation: grampä

Sentence: You could always count on Grammpa to correct his grandchildren whenever they spoke. Sometimes they could barely utter a word or two before he would jump in to rephrase what they had just said. Eventually the children stopped talking at all when he was around. Some think that was his goal in the first place.

Etymology: grammar (the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology) + grandpa (one’s grandfather)

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Created by: galwaywegian

Pronunciation: pedd ant

Sentence: Hilary , a complete pedaunt, had driven all of her nephews to totally reject education with her "little chats"

Etymology: pedant, aunt

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COMMENTS:

pedant - how nicely arcane... :) - otherguy, 2009-01-16: 04:50:00

Exceptional. Perfectly fits the definition. - silveryaspen, 2009-01-16: 09:34:00

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Created by: artr

Pronunciation: gram-puh-lees

Sentence: Mindy is sorry she ever introduced her Grampa to FaceBook. Worse yet is that she friended him. He has become the grammpolice, correcting her every misspelling, every errant comma or apostrophe. Her friends are leaving fewer and fewer comments because he has started "helping" them too.

Etymology: Grammar (the study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed) + Grampa (grandfather) + Police (an organized civil force for maintaining order, preventing and detecting crime, and enforcing the laws)

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Created by: Nosila

Pronunciation: sin taks as ses sor

Sentence: Comma Chameleon found her mark in her new boyfriend, Colon. Although he came from good parenttheses, was very dashing, earned a high income bracket and had a hyphenated name, his English skills were dreadful. Although his Grammar had taught him well, Comma found she had to edit everything he said. She became his syntaxassessor and if it were not for the fact that he had a cute asterisk and was great at the old interrobang, she would have put a bullet beside his name before now. It did not hurt that he punctuated his wedding proposal with a large caret diamond ring...

Etymology: Syntax ( the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences) & Wordplay on Tax Assessor (an official who evaluates property for the purpose of taxing it)

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Created by: purpleartichokes

Pronunciation: speek-rite-ur

Sentence: It's, like, impossible to talk at Mary. Always correcting me, she is. She's a speakrighter determined to make me speak righter.

Etymology: speak, right, speech writer

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COMMENTS:

Dylan Thomas said, 'British broadcasters speak as if they had Elgin's marbles in their mouth," - OZZIEBOB, 2008-03-26: 17:36:00

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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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