Words by John Sheehan
4 words contributed
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(______________)n. 1. The name given to the balls of fuzzy matter which collect in
the fingers of gloves. 2. Any of several species of small horned
rodents resembling rabbits and dwelling in twigs and small sticks.
3. A condition of the telephone lines which results when large
numbers of people call (in response to a television evangelist's
request for money) for the sole purpose of causing this condition to
arise. [A patalogism. Of course, if anyone were to fill in the blanks,
these words would never have been patalogisms. Even a typo
which resulted in filling in the blank space would destroy the
patalogismistic quality.]
Origin: [rec'd April 23, 1987] -
('a 'kran a 'pat e le jiz em)n. a word which whas thought to be a patalogism, but which was
brought into existence any time before the word was first thought to
be a patalogism.
4/1987 -
('kran o 'a 'pat e le jiz em)n. a word which was thought to be a patalogism, but which was
brought into existence after the word was first thought to be a
patalogism.
4/1987 -
('pat e le jiz em)n. 1. A word, words, class of words or system of words which does
not exist. 2. Reference to such made in a manner so as to not
destroy their non-existance.
(Humans who invent words are possibly higher than other humans
in the same way that humans are considered higher than other
animals because humans invent tools. Thinking about this, though,
I have never met anyone who has invented a tool. Was there ever
really a person man human god named 'Wrench'; and did their
progeny invent and name a tool 'crescent'? One easily gets
confused when presented with such ideas.
Of course, if you consider this argument with all of its
epistemologically phenomenocatastrophological byways, then
tools (and words) were discovered, not invented. If this is indeed
the case, then there can be no patalogism. Moreover, then a
patalogism is something that cannot exist by virtue of its definition.
That puts it into a special class of words which (if named) would
not be able to exist, either. Some words are better left undefined,
and all systems of words are incomplete. Kurt Godel, the dead
mathematician, would have liked this. April 9, 1987.)
Origin: [origin obscure]1987