Jester's Condescending English Dictionary - S
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
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| sadism | n | A sadist refusing to whip a masochist. |
| sadoequinecrophilia | n | Beating a dead horse. |
| Sage | n | A bloke who knows his onions. |
| San Diego | n | Four million people, where you can't get a good cheeseburger, no matter how hard you try. |
| San Francisco | n | (1) Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse. (2) A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to tie my shoelaces there. |
| Sarchasm | n | The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it. |
| Savage's Law of Expediency | n | You want it bad, you'll get it bad. |
| Scoldaphobia | n | Fear the toilet will flush while showering |
| Scapegoat | n | Goat of non-Australian origin, not welcome in this country. -- Good News Week *2 |
| scenario | n | An imagined sequence of events that provides the context in which a business decision is made. Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. |
| Schapiro's Explanation | n | The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's because they use more manure. |
| Schlattwhapper | n | The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down, hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| Schmidt's Observation | n | All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap than a thin person. |
| schnuffel | n | A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in mixed company. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| Schwiggle | n | The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a pencil. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| Scott's First Law | n | No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right. |
| Scott's Second Law | n | When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been wrong in the first place. Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation. |
| scribline | n | The blank area on the back of credit cards where one's signature goes. -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends |
| Scurry | n | Takeaway Indian food. |
| Search Engine | v | What you have to do when the ute won't start |
| Second Law of Business Meetings | n | If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you will pick the wrong one. Corollary: If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong, anyway. |
| Second Law of Final Exams | n | In your toughest final -- for the first time all year -- the most distractingly attractive student in the class will sit next to you. |
| The Second Law of Thermodynamics | n | If you think things are in a mess now, just wait! -- Jim Warner |
| Secretary's Revenge | n | Filing almost everything under "the". |
| Secretion | n | Hiding anything. |
| Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine | n | Ice Cream cures all ills. Temporarily. |
| Self Test for Paranoia | n | You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's your own fault. |
| seminars | pl, n | From 'semi' and 'arse', hence, any half-assed discussion. |
| Senate | n | A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors. -- Ambrose Bierce |
| senility | n | The state of mind of elderly persons with whom one happens to disagree. |
| serendipity | n | The process by which human knowledge is advanced. |
| Serial Port | n | Where they load the grain onto ships. |
| Serocki's Stricture | n | Marriage is always a bachelor's last option. |
| Serology | n | Study of English knighthood. |
| The Seventh Commandment for Technicians | n | Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways. |
| Sex | n | (1) the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble. -- John Barrymore (2)An emotion in motion |
| Shannon's Observation | n | Nothing is so frustrating as a bad situation that is beginning to improve. |
| share | v | To give in, endure humiliation. |
| Shaw's Principle | n | Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. |
| Shedenhelm's Law | n | All trails have more uphill sections than they have downhill sections. |
| Shick's Law | n | There is no problem a good miracle can't solve. |
| Showerbath | n | Natural venue for sexual adventures -- wash together, make love together: only convenient overhead point in most apartments or hotel rooms to attach a partner's hands. Don't pull down the fixture, however -- it isn't weightbearing. See Discipline. -- The Joy of Sex |
| Shrinking Violent | n | A shy gangster. |
| Silverman's Law | n | If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will. |
| Simon's Law | n | Everything put together falls apart sooner or later. |
| Sinema | n | Where you watch naughty movies. |
| Sinsational | adj | Something that feels so good, but is wrong. |
| Sitophobia | n | Fear of food.See also Ballistophobia, Otophobia, Peccatophobia, Taphephobia, Trichophobia and Vestiphobia |
| Sitting Pretty | n | Sitting Bull's gay brother. |
| The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee | n | The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going in a direction you did not want. (Goes the wrong way = Goes a long way.) -- Dan Roddick |
| Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor) | n | That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you got, gives you the answer you should have gotten. |
| Slick's Three Laws of the Universe | pl, n | (1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check. (2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat. (3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects. |
| Slous' Contention | n | If you do a job too well, you'll get stuck with it. |
| Slurm | n | The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when it sits in the dish too long. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| Snacktrek | n | The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have materialized. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" |
| snappy repartee | n | What you'd say if you had another chance. |
| Snuff | n | Sufficient unto the day. |
| Sodd's Second Law | n | Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur. |
| Software | n | Formal evening attire for female computer analysts. |
| Sonata | n | A song sung by Frank. |
| Sosumi | n | New Japanese restaurant for lawyers |
| Space Invaders | n | Fleas inside a blonde's ear. |
| spagmumps | n | Any of the millions of Styrofoam wads that accompany mail-order items. -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends |
| Specimen | n | An Italian astronaut. |
| Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading | n | The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it. |
| Spence's Admonition | n | Never stow away on a kamikaze plane. |
| spinster, n.: | (1) A bachelor's wife. (2) Unlusted number. | |
| Spirtle | n | The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in your eye. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" |
| Spouse | n | Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single. |
| Spreadsheet | n | What you do when making your bed. |
| squatcho | n | The button at the top of a baseball cap. -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends |
| Stalemate | n | A husband who has lost his ardour. |
| standards | pl, n | The principles we use to reject other people's code. |
| Start Menu | n | A list of appetisers. |
| statistics | n | A system for expressing your political prejudices in convincing scientific guise. |
| Steckel's Rule to Success | n | Good enough is never good enough. |
| Steele's Law | n | There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than ten men or fewer than one hundred. |
| Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy | n | Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink. |
| Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming | n | Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. |
| Stenderup's Law | n | The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up. |
| Stock's Observation | n | You no sooner get your head above water but what someone pulls your flippers off. |
| Stockmayer's Theorem | n | If it looks easy, it's tough. If it looks tough, it's damn well impossible. |
| Stone's Law | n | One man's "simple" is another man's "huh?" |
| Storment | n | All those really good comebacks you wished you'd said to your previous partner, now directed unknowingly at your new partner. |
| strategy | n | (1) A comprehensive plan of inaction. (2) A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until sometime after those creating it have left the organization. |
| stress | n | The confusion created when one's mind overrides the body's desire to choke the living s**t out of some a*****e who desperately needs it. |
| Stuffit | n | What you say when your computer won't work. |
| Stult's Report | n | Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is fight the solutions. |
| Stupid | n | Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay. |
| Sturgeon's Law | n | 90% of everything is crud. |
| subpoena | n | From the root "sub", below, and the Latin "poena" for male organ or penis. Therefore, "below the penis" or "by the balls." |
| Sudden Death Dating | n | Quote, female: Am I worried about taking his last name? Forget it, at this point I'll take his first name, too. |
| sugar daddy | n | A man who can afford to raise cain. |
| SUN Microsystems | n | The Network IS the Load Average. |
| sunset | n | Pronounced atmospheric scattering of shorter wavelengths, resulting in selective transmission below 650 nanometers with progressively reducing solar elevation. |
| Superuser | n | Someone who's very good at manipulating others. |
| sushi | n | When that-which-may-still-be-alive is put on top of rice and strapped on with electrical tape. |
| Sushido | n | The way of the tuna. |
| Swahili | n | The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions. -- Johnny Hart |
| swallow | v | The (blew) bird of birth control. |
| Sweater | n | A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly. |
| Swipple's Rule of Order | n | He who shouts the loudest has the floor. |
| system-independent | adj | Works equally poorly on all systems. |
