Jester's Condescending English Dictionary - P
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
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| P (piano or soft) | n | The neighbours have complained. See also F, Crescendo, PP and FF |
| PP | n | The neighbours are at the door. See also P, F, Crescendo and FF |
| pain | n | (1) One thing, at least it proves that you're alive! (2) Falling out of a twenty story building, and snagging your eyelid on a nail. (3) Sliding down a 50-foot razor blade into a bucket of alcohol. |
| Painting | n | The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| Pandora's Rule | n | Never open a box you didn't close. |
| panic | n | The first time you can't do it a second time. See also anxiety |
| Paprika Measure | n | 2 dashes == 1smidgen 2 smidgens == 1 pinch 3 pinches == 1 soupcon 2 soupcons == 2 much paprika |
| Parallel Port | n | A port next to another one. |
| paranoia | n | A healthy understanding of the way the universe works. |
| Pardo's First Postulate | n | Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Arnold's Addendum: Everything else causes cancer in rats. |
| Parents | pl, n | Couples who practice the Rhythm Method. |
| Parker's Law | n | Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. |
| Parkinson's Fifth Law | n | If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. |
| Parkinson's Fourth Law | n | The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. |
| party | n | A gathering where you meet people who drink so much you can't even remember their names. |
| Pascal | n | A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it. -- Datamation, January 15, 1984 |
| Password | n | |
| Patageometry | n | The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant under brain transplants. |
| patent | n | A method of publicizing inventions so others can copy them. |
| Paul's Laws | pl, n | (1) In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save. (2) You can't fall off the floor. |
| paycheck | n | The weekly $5.27 that remains after deductions for federal withholding, state withholding, city withholding, FICA, medical/dental, long-term disability, unemployment insurance, Christmas Club, and payroll savings plan contributions. |
| Peace | n | In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Peccatophobia | n | Fear of sinning.See also Ballistophobia, Otophobia, Sitophobia, Taphephobia, Trichophobia and Vestiphobia |
| Pecor's Health-Food Principle | n | Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in it. |
| Pedaeration | n | The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| pediddel | n | A car with only one working headlight. -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends |
| Peeping Tom | n | A window fan. |
| Peers's Law | n | The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem. |
| Pelvis | n | Second cousin to Elvis. |
| Penguin Trivia #46 | n | Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82 |
| pension | n | A federally insured chain letter. |
| People's Action Rules | pl, n | (1) Some people who can, shouldn't. (2) Some people who should, won't. (3) Some people who shouldn't, will. (4) Some people who can't, will try, regardless. (5) Some people who shouldn't, but try, will then blame others. |
| perfect guest | n | One who makes his host feel at home. |
| Performance | n | A statement of the speed at which a computer system works. Or rather, might work under certain circumstances. Or was rumored to be working over in Jersey about a month ago. |
| pessimist | n | A man who spends all his time worrying about how he can keep the wolf from the door. See also opportunist and optimist |
| Peter Principle | n | Promotion happens until the level of incompetence. |
| Peter's Law of Substitution | n | Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves. |
| Peter's Principle of Success | n | Get up one time more than you're knocked down. |
| Peternity | n | Responsibility for a pet for a long, long time. |
| Peterson's Admonition | n | When you think you're going down for the third time -- just remember that you may have counted wrong. |
| Peterson's Rules | pl, n | (1) Trucks that overturn on freeways are filled with something sticky. (2) No cute baby in a carriage is ever a girl when called one. (3) Things that tick are not always clocks. (4) Suicide only works when you're bluffing. |
| petribar | n | Any sun-bleached prehistoric candy that has been sitting in the window of a vending machine too long. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| Phases of a Project | pl, n | (1) Exultation. (2) Disenchantment. (3) Confusion. (4) Search for the Guilty. (5) Punishment for the Innocent. (6) Distinction for the Uninvolved. |
| philosophy | n | (1) The ability to bear with calmness the misfortunes of our friends. (2) Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems. |
| phosflink | v | To flick a bulb on and off when it burns out (as if, somehow, that will bring it back to life). -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends |
| Pickle's Law | n | If Congress must do a painful thing, the thing must be done in an odd-number year. |
| Pig | n | An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| pile driver | n | Local drink; two parts vodka, one part prune juice. |
| Pimp | n | (1) Nookie Bookie. (2) Public relations man for a public relations girl. |
| pixel | n | A mischievous, magical spirit associated with screen displays. The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology: Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence, and the trolls in the marketing department. |
| platonic friendship | n | What develops when two people get tired of making love to each other. |
| pocket pool | n | Well, for guys, it's two-ball in the side pocket. For women, it's playing the slots. |
| Pohl's law | n | Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it. |
| poisoned coffee | n | Grounds for divorce. |
| polish fly | n | You put it in her drink and she begs you to take her bowling. |
| Politician | n | (1) An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" (2) From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or "face," as in "tete-a-tete:" head to head or face to face). Hence "polytetien," a person of two or more faces. -- Martin Pitt |
| politics | n | A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| Pollyanna's Educational Constant | n | The hyperactive child is never absent. |
| polygon | n | Dead parrot. |
| Poorman's Rule | n | When you pull a plastic garbage bag from its handy dispenser package, you always get hold of the closed end and try to pull it open. |
| Pornography | n | Cliterature. |
| Portable | adj | Survives system reboot. |
| Positive | adj | Mistaken at the top of one's voice. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Post-operative | adj | A letter carrier. |
| poverty | n | An unfortunate state that persists as long as anyone lacks anything he would like to have. |
| Power | n | The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA. |
| prairies | n | Vast plains covered by treeless forests. |
| pray | n | To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| premature ejaculation | n | A spoilspurt. |
| premature ejaculator | n | Troubled shooter. |
| Premenstrual Syndrome | n | Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time. |
| Primeval | adj | Being really good at being really bad! |
| promotion | n | New title, new salary, new office, same old crap. |
| promotion from within | v | A system of moving incompetents up to the policy-making level where they can't foul up operations. |
| Protein | n | In favour of young people. |
| Psychoceramics | n | The study of crackpots. |
| psychologist | n | Someone who watches everyone else when an attractive woman walks into a room. |
| pubic hair | n | Organic dental floss. |
| Puritanism | n | the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. -- H.L. Mencken, "A Book of Burlesques" |
