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Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
Verbiage for the Verbose
Last year at a book sale, I bought a book called Verbiage for the Verbose. It's a book of what the cover calls "word challenges." I love words and word puzzles and word challenges. They're my idea of a good Saturday night...and I know I'm not the only one on Humzoo...so, I figured I'd share.
These word challenges take common sayings and rewrite them more elaborately (hence "verbose").
For example:
"A single gent's beef is a different gent's toxin" is "One man's meat is another man's poison."
So, here ya go.
1. Kindly do not swallow the yellow and white flowers.
2. Piece of fur from the barking beast that nipped you.
3. Extraordinary intellects ideate similarly.
4. Allow slumbering pooches to be recumbent.
5. Set one's cash in the place one's tongue resides.
6. Possess different beasts with gills to saute.
7. One soup-eating utensil's worth of sucrose aids in the ingestion of pharmaceuticals.
8. A domestic fowl in each metal cooking container.
9. Do not substitute stallions in the center of a creek.
10. A multitude of sets of fingers and thumbs produce facile labor.
11. It is impossible to manufacture a pocketbook of material from a worm's filament by using the auditory apparatus of an adult female swine.
12. The stalk of grain that fractured the dromedary's spine.
13. Subsist by the saber, meet death by the saber.
14. Grab the male cow by the pointed growth on the head.
15. Do not dispose of the infant when disposing of the liquid in the tub.
Some of these are relatively easy...some are not. But all of them are fun (if you're a word nerd like me).
Verbiage for the Verbose
Last year at a book sale, I bought a book called Verbiage for the Verbose. It's a book of what the cover calls "word challenges." I love words and word puzzles and word challenges. They're my idea of a good Saturday night...and I know I'm not the only one on Humzoo...so, I figured I'd share.
These word challenges take common sayings and rewrite them more elaborately (hence "verbose").
For example:
"A single gent's beef is a different gent's toxin" is "One man's meat is another man's poison."
So, here ya go.
1. Kindly do not swallow the yellow and white flowers.
2. Piece of fur from the barking beast that nipped you.
3. Extraordinary intellects ideate similarly.
4. Allow slumbering pooches to be recumbent.
5. Set one's cash in the place one's tongue resides.
6. Possess different beasts with gills to saute.
7. One soup-eating utensil's worth of sucrose aids in the ingestion of pharmaceuticals.
8. A domestic fowl in each metal cooking container.
9. Do not substitute stallions in the center of a creek.
10. A multitude of sets of fingers and thumbs produce facile labor.
11. It is impossible to manufacture a pocketbook of material from a worm's filament by using the auditory apparatus of an adult female swine.
12. The stalk of grain that fractured the dromedary's spine.
13. Subsist by the saber, meet death by the saber.
14. Grab the male cow by the pointed growth on the head.
15. Do not dispose of the infant when disposing of the liquid in the tub.
Some of these are relatively easy...some are not. But all of them are fun (if you're a word nerd like me).
2. Hair of the dog that bit you.
3. Great minds think alike.
4. Let sleeping dogs lie.
5. Put your money where your mouth is.
...I'll let the others play now. :)
2. something with a dog...
3. Great minds think alike. :)
4. Let sleeping dogs lie.
5. Put yo money where yo mouth is.
6. No clue.
7. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
8. Bird in a can?
9. Oregon Trail rocks but you usually sink if you try to walk thru the river. (that's totally right!)
10. Too many hands ... messes sh*t up.
11. You can't make a purse out of a pig's ear?
12. What?!
13. Mess with the bull, you get the horns!!! haha.
14. ha...Take the bull by it's horns.
15. Take the baby out of the bucket of water before pouring it out - that's just common sense.
Wow...I'm awful. And I was a Rhetoric Major. Gimme the words and I'll spin 'em ... but, this is just too much!! haha.
Thanks Mrs. Shoo ... now back to work. I'll wait to see some real answers soon --- I'm convinced some of those are regional sayings! :)
You've got quite a few of them, Hayley.
8. A Chicken in every pot.
9. Don't change horses midstream.
10. Many hands make light work.
13. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
15. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
That should be all of them.
2) Hair of the dog that bit you.
3) Great minds think alike.
4) Let sleeping dogs lie.
5) Put your money where your mouth is.
6) Have other fish to fry.
7) A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.
8) A chicken in every pot. (This was FDR campaign slogan. And, no I am not that old.)
9) Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.
10) Many hands make easy work
11) Can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
12) – Straw that broke the camel’s back.
13) Live by the sword, die by the sword.
14) Grab the bull by the horns.
15) Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
In getting rid of waste, don’t also discard what is worth keeping.
p.s. That was such a teacher response. I didn't mean to English teacher you, Hayley.
Here’s the literal meaning:
In the olden days, before body odor was considered offensive, families would only bathe once every few weeks or so. On bath night, they would fill a barrel or a trough or something with water and then proceed to takes turns bathing. The father would customarily go first, followed by ma, and then all of the kids. By the time it was the baby’s turn to be washed, the water would be thick with filth. The joke was (people in the olden days had a great sense of humour) that if the baby were to go under, you wouldn’t be able to see him and you might forget he was in there. Thus, you might accidently empty the barrel into the creek or where have you and the baby would flow out with it. This was considered to be a waste of a good child, but still pretty funny.