The Pun Dictionary

The Washington Post recently published a contest for readers in which they were asked to supply alternate meanings for various words. Here are some of the winning entries, along with other suggestions trawled from various sources. If you have any ideas you would like included, please e-mail me here, and I will add the best ones (with full credit to you of course!)

WORD	MEANING	AUTHOR
Abdicate	To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach
Absentee	A missing golf peg	Liguorian
Abundance	Big party held in a bakery	Aiken Drum
Actor	A ham that can't be cured	Leopold Fechtner
Adduce	The lowest card in the deck	Leopold Fechtner
Adventure	A daring new marketing campaign	Lars Hanson
Alarms	What an octopus is	Leopold Fechtner
Alimony	Something which enables a woman to profit by her mistakes	Leopold Fechtner
Analysis	A rectal examination	Kevin Hale
Appear	Something you fish from	Leopold Fechtner
Artery	The study of paintings
Arachnoleptic fit	The frantic dance performed just after you've walked through a spider's web
Asphalt	A rectal problem
Avoidable	What a bullfighter tries to do
Axiom	What one does to trees that are in the way	Pierre Abbat
Bacteria	Rear entrance to a cafeteria
Balderdash	A rapidly receding hairline
Ball-race	A tom-cat with a ten-yard start on the vet
Baloney	Where some hemlines fall
Barbed Wire	An insulting telegram	Merlyn Baby
Barium	What doctors due when patients die
Benign	What you be after you be eight
Bernadette	The act of setting light to your credit card statement
Bloodless Coup	An anæmic pigeon	Kevin Hale
Bouffant	A surprising typeface	Kevin Hale
Brassiere	A device to bring out a girl's best points	Henny Youngman
Budget	An attempt to live below your yearnings	Aiken Drum
Burglarize	What a crook sees with
Bustard	A very rude bus driver
Cabbage	Your taxi fare	Kevin Hale
Caesarean Section	An area of Rome
Campanology	Intense study	Kevin Hale
Cannibal	Someone who is fed up with people	John Nunley
Carcase	A garage	Kevin Hale
Carcinoma	A valley in Southern California, notable for its heavy smog
Carrot	Vehicle decay	Lewis Gerolemou
Cartoonist	What you call a mechanic
Catscan	Searching for kitty
Cauterize	Made eye contact with her
Cellphone	Means of communication for prisoners	Kevin Hale
Circumvent	The opening in the front of boxer shorts
City	One who is sat on	Richard Lederer
Cockpit	A vagina	Richard Lederer
Cock au Vin	Classy oral sex	Lars Hanson
Codpieces	Fish fingers	John M
Coffee	A person who is coughed upon
Colic	Acute stomach ache affecting sheep dogs	Kevin Hale
Coma	A punctuation mark
Consensus	An agreement to falsify population statistics	Kevin Hale
Contact	To swindle someone with diplomacy	Kevin Hale
Control	A short, ugly inmate
Convince	To swindle someone named Vincent	Kevin Hale
Counterfeiters	Workers who put together kitchen cabinets
Crestfallen	How you feel when you drop the toothpaste
Dark Ages	Knight time	PUNAmerican Newsletter
Darwinism	Survival of the foetus	Richard Lederer
Decafalon	The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that a re good for you
Decimated	How you feel after leaving an orgy with 10 people	Kevin Hale
Delight	What a refrigerator does when you close the door
Diarrhœa	A journal listing your stomach upsets	Kevin Hale
Diary	A book in which to list funeral dates	Kevin Hale
Dibber	A boy scout	Kevin Hale
Dickens	A 1960s sex party	Andy Jackson
Dilate	To live for a long time
Dildo	A meat substitute	Richard Lederer
Diplomacy	Lying in state	Oliver Herford
Diptheria	Someone who expounds about slumps in profit	Kevin Hale
Diversion	Translation into Welsh	John M
Drawback	Problem associated with being un-circumsized	Kevin Hale
Drive-in Movie	Wall to wall car petting	M. Rose Pierce
Dyspepsia	Stomach ache from drinking too much cola	Kevin Hale
Eclipse	What an English barber does for a living
Enema	Not a friend
Ennoculation	Vaccination against the Black Death	Kevin Hale
Ergo	She went	Kevin Hale
Esplanade	To attempt an explanation while drunk
Executive	A hangman	Kevin Hale
Eyebrows	What I do when I go shopping
Eyedropper	A clumsy ophthalmologist
Fascination	A preoccupation with zippers, buttons, and closures of every kind	Tiff Wimberly
Fallacy	A false belief that your penis is larger than it really is	Kevin Hale
Fester	Quicker than someone else
Fibula	A small lie
Fiefdom	A prophylactic for bananas	Kevin Hale
Filling Station	A dental surgery	Kevin Hale
Fireplace	An office used for discharging people	Helen Hoke
Flabbergasted	Appalled at how much weight you have gained
Flail	The opposite of slucceed
Flatulence	The emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller
Fly Paper	An Air Mail Letter	Stan Kegel
Foreclose	Why teenagers go to a fashion shop
Foreclosure	A fate worse that debt	Lee Daniel Quinn
Forfeit	What most animals stand on	Leopold Fechtner
Forger	A person who writes things you can't bank on	Lee Daniel Quinn
Furlong	Angora cat hair	Richard Lederer
Gargoyle	An olive-flavoured mouthwash
Genealogy	The study of the wish-granting residents of brass lamps	Tiff Wimberly
Genital	A Non-Jew
Gentry	Way in to the men's toilets	Kevin Hale
Gold Digger	A gal who likes to go buy-buy	Helen Hoke
Good-for-nothing	An obedient child that doesn't get any pocket money	Lee Daniel Quinn
Gullible	An easily-duped sea bird	Kevin Hale
Gumbo	What John Derek does after he takes out his teeth at night
Handkerchief	Cold storage	John Nunley
Hangnail	Where you put your coat
Hatchet	What a hen does to an egg	Leopold Fechtner
Hermit	What she catches a baseball with
Heroes	What a boy does on the lake when his outboard motor won't run	Pierre Abbat
Hoarding	Advertising poster for prostitutes	Kevin Hale
Housefly	A zipper through which you enter and leave a house
Housewife	A gadget you screw on the bed, and it cooks and cleans for you	Don Thorn
Hullabaloo	Noisy lavatory	John M
Hunger	What the posse did to the lady rustler	Art. Moger
Hypochondriac	A guy who won't let well enough alone
Impotent	Distinguished, well known
Innuendo	An Italian suppository
Intermittent	A boy scout's request for you to join him under canvas	Kevin Hale
Interruption	A pause during a funeral	Kevin Hale
Isolate	Delay because of frozen roads	Ray Hand
Jigsaw	Injury caused through Irish dancing	Kevin Hale
Kidnap	When a young person gets extra sleep	Jay Christie
Knapsack	Sleeping bag	John M
Labour pain	Industrial injury
Lactose	What you say when someone has no feet	Hershy
Lagoon	A French idiot
Lay-By	A place to pull off the road for safe sex?	Kevin Hale
Locomotive	Crazy reason	Brandy Brandson
Logarithm	A group of singing Lumberjacks	Richard Lederer
Logjam	Constipation!	Kevin Hale
Lymph	To walk with a lisp
Marionettes	The residents of Washington who have been jerked around by the mayor
Marsupial	Mother's conger potage	Kevin Hale
Medical staff	A doctor's cane
Medieval	Harold Shipman	John M
Melancholy	Very sad mixed vegetables	Kevin Hale
Meteor	A rock star	Ken Johns
Mirage	A good place to keep an imaginary car	Ken Johns
Misery	A collection of misers	Leo Roston
Misty	How golfers create divots
Monkeys	What they use to unlock doors in a monastery	Gill Krebs
Morbid	A higher offer than my bid
Mosquito	A fly that lives in Muslim churches	Kevin Hale
Mousetrap	A device used by mice to attract cheese
Negligent	A condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie
Nephophilia	A morbid fear of German cooking appliances	Kevin Hale
Nitrates	Cheaper than day rates
Node	Was aware of
Novelty	A library of novels	Leo Roston
Oar	A cockney prostitute	Richard Lederer
Octopus	A cat that has already used up one of his lives
Orgasm	Being overcome with pleasure at a rowing event	Kevin Hale
Outpatient	A person who has fainted in hospital
Overcharged	When you've paid too much for a battery	Kevin Hale
Overnight Bag	Complimentary 'lady-of-the-night' provided in a hotel	Kevin Hale
Ovulate	"Oh no! I think I'm pregnant!"	Kevin Hale
Oyster	A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions
Pantry	A collection of pants	Leo Roston
Paradox	A quandary over which of the two physicians to choose	Kevin Hale
Paraphrase	GERONIMO!!!	Kevin Hale
Parasites	What you see from the top of the Eiffel Tower
Parsnip	Dad's little drink	Lewis Gerolemou
Pastoral Scene	What the Reverend goes through when he comes home late
Past tense	When you used to be nervous	Leo Roston
Penis	The only thing that a woman hopes she will find hard to handle	Richard Lederer
Perspire	How church builders calculate their construction costs	Ray Hand
Pharmacist	A helper on the farm
Polarize	What penguins see with
Popcorn	Serial father	Lewis Gerolemou
Pregnancy	The shape of things to come	M. Rose Pierce
Program	Favouring metric weights over British	Kirk Russell
Propaganda	To have a good look	Kevin Hale
Protractor	In favour of using mechanical farm machinery	Richard Lederer
Psalm	Less than many but more than none	Brandi Brandon
Pumpkin	To interrogate a member of your family	Andy Jackson
Quartet	A little larger than a pint
Quintessential	Something you have to do five times	David Reihmer
Ragamuffin	Something to eat at a Ravi Shankar concert	Ray Hand
Rectitude	The formal, dignified demeanour assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you
Relief	What trees do in the spring
Remember	To recall that you must renew your allegiance to a club	Kevin Hale
Rent Boy	The consequences of having anal sex with a male prostitute who's too tight	Kevin Hale
Repercussions	The consequences of playing the drums	Kevin Hale
Romantic	Parasites infesting some Italian males	Gary Hallock
Rubberneck	What you do to relax your wife
Rubicon	Being seen off over the cost of a Cockney curry	Kevin Hale
Sandwich	Beach hag	Lewis Gerolemou
Sarcasm	Quip lash	The Pun Page
Seamstress	Describes 250 pounds in a size six
Selfish	The way the owner of a seafood store feels after a days' work
Semantics	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
Sentimental	Driving Italians crazy	Robert McGuigan
Sherbet	A tip on a horse race or sporting event	Art. Moger
Sex Education	Sermon on the mount	Don Thorn
Subdued	Like, a guy, like, works on one of those, like, submarines, man
Successfully	To completely suck up vile fluids	Keith Jackson
Sudafed	Brought litigation against a government official
Suede	How you feel when you get off a boat	Robert McGuigan
Suffocation	Being made to live in Ipswich	Kevin Hale
Sycophant	I much prefer Dec	Andy Jackson
Synagogue	The wide-eyed look when watching a blue movie for the first time	Kevin Hale
Tennis	Five plus five	Kirk Miller
Tentative	Doubtful about going camping	Kevin Hale
Testicle	A humorous question on an exam
Transplantation	Moving a farm	Keith Martin
Triplet	Renting out your apartment while you're on holiday	Robert E Lewis
Tripod	Three-legged device for carrying offal	Kevin Hale
Tycoon	Businessman who made his millions selling cravats	Kevin Hale
Unkempt	Rough looking state of 'Eastenders' after Grant Mitchell leaves	Kevin Hale
Trolley Bus	Mobile underwear shop	Kevin Hale
Unstable	Take the horse out of the barn	Brandi Brandon
Violin	A bad hotel	Richard Lederer
Walnuts	People who are crazy about walls	Gill Krebs
Wanderlust	A promiscuous hiker	Andy Jackson
Willy-nilly	Impotent
Wishy-washy	Someone who daydreams in the bath tub	Mike Bull
Worship	Used to be a boat	Kevin Hale
Testiculate	To wave your arms around wildly while talking bollocks

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word or phrase from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are some recent winners, along with some of my suggestions. If you have any ideas you would like included, please e-mail me here, and I will add the best ones (with full credit to you of course!)

WORD	MEANING	AUTHOR
Acme	A generic skin disease
Adulatery	Cheating on your wife with a much younger woman who holds you in awe
Barrycade	A human shield consisting entirely of scousers
Beelzebug	Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at 3 in the morning and cannot be cast out
Blaséball player	A certain kind of athlete who makes two million dollars a year and still makes fans pay to get his autograph
Bozone	The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future
Canoedling	Kissing and cuddling in a kayak	Kevin Hale
Cashtration	The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period
Caterpallor	The colour you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating
Circuscision	The operation required to become a clown	Kevin Hale
Cunnilingut	Stimulation of the female organs by a large belly	Bruce Michel
Darthritis	A fatal condition causing audible respiratory problems, split-actor disorder, and eventual electrocution
Deflon	The substance that causes you to become hard of hearing after being hit with a frying pan	Kevin Hale
Deifenestration	To throw all talk of God out the window
Dimages	Compensation awarded to people for accidents caused by their own stupidity
Doltergeist	A spirit that decides to haunt somewhere really stupid, like your septic tank
Dopeler effect	The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly
Emasculathe	The tool used for castration
Eunouch	The pain of castration
Fantastick	Very effective adhesive
Farticulation	Well pronounced flatulence
Foreploy	Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of obtaining sex
Fortissimoe	The musical moment produced when someone serially slaps the faces of the first-violin section
Fortune Kookie	Anyone who actually believes that something written on a piece of paper stuffed into a curled wafer in a Chinese restaurant will actually come true
Gear lobe	Any human ear that is pierced more than four times
Genitaliar	An image-enhancing object that can be carried in a man's front pocket
Giraffiti	Vandalism spray painted very high
Glibido	All talk and no action
Gnativity	Christmas play performed by small insects	Kevin Hale
Grand Copera	Any T.V. offering that is a high-drama police show in a serial format
Guillozine	Trade magazine for executioners
Halogem	A precious stone, usually a diamond, that is so large that it blinds anyone within a two mile radius with its reflected light
Handicarp	The condition under which employees must work when they have a boss that constantly holds meetings to find out what's taking everyone so long to complete a project
Hilaryous	Adjective describing any hopes that a former First Lady can successfully run for President if it means that the ex-President will be back in the White House in ANY capacity
Hindkerchief	Really expensive toilet paper; Toilet paper at Buckingham Palace
Hipatitis	Terminal coolness
Hozone	A place with a comedy atmosphere	Kevin Hale
Ignoranus	A person who is both stupid and an asshole
Imargination	The fantasy of being left on the edge	Kevin Hale
Inportune	Forcing others to listen to your out-of-tune singing	Bruce Michel
Impotience	The state of eager anticipation felt by men awaiting their Viagra prescription
Innoculate	To take coffee intravenously
Insect Rebellent	Any spray, citronella candle, bug bomb, pheromone trap or electric zapper that makes hornets madder than they were before
Intaxication	Euphoria at getting a refund from the Inland Revenue, which lasts until you realise it was your money to start with
Jaztec	A modern interior design in which ancient artifacts and style are placed among aluminum tubing-based furniture in an attempt to look stylish
Karmageddon	It's like, when everybody is sending off all those really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like a serious bummer
Lullabuy	The music from the sort of advert which sends you to sleep	Kevin Hale
Luperiority	A classier state of madness
Malloween costume	Soft, spongy white edible clothes worn at the end of October	Kevin Hale
Manufracture	To produce items which break after little use
Nazigator	A fanatical pilot's assistant	Kevin Hale
Newtspaper	Ken Livingstone's favourite periodical	Kevin Hale
Orbituary	Death announcement for a satellite	Bruce Michel
Osteopornosis	A degenerate disease
Pasteal	The color that appears on all your pages when your printer runs out of "yellow" and "magenta"
Phonetick	The involuntary rolling of the eyes when one receives a call during dinner
Pigamist	A person with more than one porcine spouse	Kevin Hale
Purrgatory	Where cats go when they die	James D. Ertner
Reintarnation	Coming back to life as a hillbilly
Repoduction	The means by which peas self-generate their species	Kevin Hale
Residental Area	The place on your dentures that is covered with yucky gooey stuff you have to scrape off when they don't stick anymore before you can put more gooey stuff on them so they will stick again
Russian Orthodixy	Certain sect of Christian beliefs found in the Russian state of Georgia
Sandalize	To cause a stir/outrage with consistently unfashionable footwear
Sarchasm	The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the reader who doesn't get it
Simmer Frame	A support for holding saucepans	Kevin Hale
Spamphlet	A thick section included in the centre pages of a magazine designed to look like an legitimate article with the words, "Special Advertising Section" written on the top in microscopic letters
Telegant	Looking good on TV
Testiculate	To point furiously at a man's genitalia
Traumatizer	A particularly disturbed can of soft drink
Urinal	The one place where all men are peers	Dan and Paula
Vaseball	A game of catch played by children in the living room
Wangst	Post-masturbatory guilt
Writer's tramp	A companion who practices poetic licentiousness
Xenaphobic	Fear of women wearing tight black leather
X-Failes	Any popular T.V. show that is turned into a movie

A New York paper recently asked readers to take foreign phrases, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are some entries, along with some of my suggestions. If you have any ideas you would like included, please e-mail me here, and I will add the best ones (with full credit to you of course!)

WORD	MEANING	AUTHOR
Ad Hock	Special poster for German wine	Kevin Hale
Aloha Oy	Love; greetings; farewell; from such a pain you should never know
Altar Ego	A stand-in vicar	Kevin Hale
Anno Domino	A very long game of dominos	Kevin Hale
Après Moe Le Déluge	Larry and Curly got wet
Arse gratia artis	Buggery as an art form	Bruce Michel
Bootique	Shoe shop	Kevin Hale
Çà Va Sans Dirt	And that's not gossip
Cogito Eggo Sum	I think; therefore I am a waffle
Entente Cordial	To agree on which flavour soft drink to have	Kevin Hale
Faux Par	To lose a golf ball	Kevin Hale
Felix Navidad	Our cat has a boat
Harlez-Vous Français?	Can you ride a French motorcycle?
Haste Cuisine	Fast French food
Ich Bit Ein Berliner	He deserved it
Ich Liebe Rich	I'm really crazy about having dough
Idios Amigos	We're wild and crazy guys!
Le Roi Est Mort. Jive Le Roi!	The king is dead. No kidding!
L'État, C'Est Moo	I'm bossy around here
Mal De Mere	To be sick of one's mother	Kevin Hale
Merci Rien	Thanks for nothin'!
Monage A Trois	I am three years old
Nil Desperandum	Don't worry about the football scores	Kevin Hale
Porte-Kochere	Sacramental wine
Posh Mortem	Death styles of the rich and famous
Pro Bozo Publico	Support your local clown
Que Sera Serf	Life is feudal
Quip Pro Quo	A fast retort
Réspondez S'Il Vous Plaid	Honk if you're Scottish
Roger Mortis	A necrophiliac	Kevin Hale
Taterfamilias	The head of the Potato Head family
Tigor Mortis	The cat is dead	Kevin Hale
Veni, Vidi, Velcro	I came, I saw, I stuck around
Veni, Vidi, Vice	I came, I saw, I partied
Veni, VIPi, Vici	I came, I'm a very important person, I conquered
Visa La France	Don't leave your chateau without it
Zitgeist	The Clearasil doesn't quite cover it up

Have a look at the New Definitions page in my I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue web site (www.isihac.org.uk).