Sedulous

A sedulous person is very diligent and persevering. In fact, I can be considered as sedulous - even though I haven't realised it until now. It's the first day of the Rugby World Cup here in NZ today - so let's hope our All Blacks are sedulous throughout the tournament!

As always, the alternative meanings for sedulous were highly amusing and sooo difficult to choose between. I eventually settled on the following meaning as the winner, because it made me giggle. But there were some very close seconds. Well done, everyone.

LivelyClamor gave us this great invented meaning: "Sedulous is sitting on a warm white sandy beach with no inclination to get up, and the phenomenon of rubbing yourself into the sand as if planning to send down roots. Unfortunately, this is eventually followed by "perspickety" when you have to get up and brush all that sand off all those places it's now sticking to."

Paraprosdokian

A paraprosdokian is a sentence which starts with a well known figure of speech but ends with an unexpected and humorous twist. For example, "where there's a will...I want to be in it" is a paraprosdokian.

You can have lots of fun with paraprosdokians and you'll find plenty more if you google the word. It goes without saying that I absolutely adored your invented meanings for paraprosdokian this week and I am in awe of your ingenuity. Fabulous work, word imps! Choosing a winner was tricky but I settled on the suggestion from Hey Jude because it made me laugh out loud - which is always a good thing to do in the morning. Thanks Jude.

Here's her invented meaning: "Paraprosdokian is the parallel import fairy-tale for Rumpelstiltskin."

Greave

A greave is a piece of shin armour. I guess it's the olden day form of a soccer or hockey shin pad. So next time my son is remembering all his soccer bits and pieces before the game I'll be sure and remind him about his greaves!

Thanks to the word imps who joined in with this one - all good invented meanings. Sprite gave us the first and, in my opinion, best meaning for greave. Here it is:
"Because the rich man was not well liked, his association hired some older widows to greave at his grave so it would not be obvious that no one felt any great grief at his loss."

I love it!