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#21: whodunit

6/30/2015

thrilling whodunit
film's over... we still don't know!
how to sleep tonight?

This is the whodunit of Whodunits! It wasn't until the movie was over that I realized there were only two actors and basically one room the whole time. A tour de force by two of the best, which earned the film and actors four Oscar nominations!

DEFINITION of this 3-syllable noun:

Informal. a narrative dealing with a murder or a series of murders and the detection of the criminal;
detective story.

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#20: piebald

6/29/2015

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silly word: piebald
not about pie or baldness
what's a better word?

IMHO, some words are really not helpful, and should just cease to be part of the lexicon. "They" can add words... why not subtract some? Who decides?

So, anyone have a good replacement for piebald? I wonder how hard it would be to make up a word and get it in the dictionary. Has anyone attempted that?

DEFINITIONS for this 2-syllable adjective:

having patches of black and white or of other colors; parti-colored.
a piebald animal, especially a horse.

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#19: stinkaroo

6/28/2015

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skunks on location
of underfunded movie
caused big stinkeroo

"You are ze corned beef to me, and I am ze cabbage to you."
— Pepé Le Pew.

DEFINITION of this 3-syllable noun:

Slang. something markedly inferior in quality: a stinkeroo of a motion picture.

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#18: preprandial

6/27/2015

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preprandial pie
is my choice since I'm feeling
rather upper crust

< One of my favorite sayings, but:

eating dessert first
is a blessing disguised by
a growing waistline!

DEFINITION of this adjective:

before a meal, especially before dinner: a preprandial apéritif.

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#17: tenderfoot

6/26/2015

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tenderfoot he was
new to Texas from New York
brought his feather bed

That's the wonderful Joe E. Brown in "The Tenderfoot."

"His comical face and satchel-sized mouth seemed to overshadow the fact that Brown was a remarkably gifted athlete and had an almost deceptively ripped physique, which he maintained throughout his entire life."

Click to enlarge the photo, and you might notice the symbols on Joe's hat band, as I did... looks like a swastika! Although a symbol that's been around long before the Third Reich, I wondered about "Joe and the Nazis?" Turns out Mr. Brown was strongly against the Nazis, and "testified before Congress in 1939 before the House Immigration Committee in support of a bill that would allow 20,000 German-Jewish refugee children into the United States. He would later adopt two German-Jewish refugee boys himself."

"He was one of only two civilians awarded the Bronze Star during World War II. At his own expense, he would travel frequently to Europe to entertain the troops, performing in all weather conditions and frequently in hospitals. He was even known to have done his entire routine for dying soldiers. On each trip back to the United States, he would bring sacks of mail from the servicemen to deliver to their families." (Excerpts from the IMDb website.)

DEFINITION of this noun:

a raw, inexperienced person; novice.
a newcomer to the ranching and mining regions of the western U.S., unused to hardships.
one in the lowest rank of the Boy Scouts of America or Girl Scouts of America.

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#16: ubiety

6/25/2015

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I've anxiety
'bout the word "ubiety"
don't know where I stand

one thing I do know:
the word ubiety is
not ubiquitous

Okay, this was a real stumper! When you have to read the definition several (strike) many times just to understand how to use the word in a sentence (strike) haiku, why would you even want to make it part of your vocabulary? (One clue is when it doesn't come up in your spell checker.)

Realizing "ubiety" has the same root as "ubiquity" helped... Well, it helped in writing a haiku about it!

DEFINITION of this noun:

the property of having a definite location at any given time; state of existing and being localized in space.
huh?

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#15: ennui

6/24/2015

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they tried very hard
to watch one more cat YouTube
absolute ennui

Oh yes, and you can spend hours looking at cute photos of kids and animals... complet, totál, absolu... ennui!

Yet these kinds of photos speak to a universal love... trusted friends, safe slumber... peace. It is this common ground where we humans will find our transformation to higher ground.

DEFINITION of this [French] noun, pronounced "ahn-wee":

a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom:
The endless lecture produced an unbearable ennui.

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#21: whodunit

#20: piebald

#19: stinkaroo

#18: preprandial

#17: tenderfoot

#16: ubiety

#15: ennui

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