ONE OF THE BEST reasons to read the Sunday Washington Post is the “Style Invitational,” a humor competition where the rules change each week, and all the entries are from readers. This week’s contest was to send in cynical definitions of common words or phrases, a’ la Ambrose Bierce. Some of my favorites:

Aging — Paced dying.
Peacetime — When there are no wars anywhere you care about.
Role Model — A professional athlete whose conduct rises to the level expected of everyone else.
Reform — The attempt to restructure inequities to your advantage.
Celebrity — One who suffers from an odd mental condition, defined by the desire for solitude and the pursuit of recognition.
Sophistry — Reason used by your opponent.
Cleavage — The part of the anatomy that a woman exposes for the purpose of having men not stare at it.
Ecumenism — Warm embrace of other religions whose adherents are eternally damned to roast in Hell.
Tramp — A woman who is sleeping with everyone but you.
Relativism — The absolute belief that there are no absolutes.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 14th, 2002 at 11:01 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.