Thursday, September 11, 2008
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Have fun with a new word each day. I'll choose a word. You make up a meaning.
Visit my Writing Bug website
How to Play:
1. I choose an obscure dictionary word.
2. You invent a wacky meaning and add it as a comment.
3. After a certain time I list the true meaning and choose a winner for the invented meaning.
There are no prizes, just lots of fun!
Remember, children use this site too.
2. You invent a wacky meaning and add it as a comment.
3. After a certain time I list the true meaning and choose a winner for the invented meaning.
There are no prizes, just lots of fun!
Remember, children use this site too.
About Me
- Word Imp
- I am a children's author who has had a handful of books published by trade publishers. They're in book shops and libraries. I've also had a sackful of books published by educational publishers. These are mainly found in schools. I love words and that's why I invented this blog site.
Followers
Please note...
By posting to this site, you give the site a nonexclusive right to any copyrighted works posted.
What I'm writing...
- Picture books in my head...
- Job applications so I can earn actual money.
- Boring stuff for companies to earn actual money.
- This blog
What I'm reading...
- Penina Petersen's Table Tucker
- Rereading my fave - The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
- Mike Gayle's To Do List
- Any good biography
- The dictionary!
13 comments:
Volapuk is a game concept that never really took off. It's like enclosed air hockey. Players put their arms through holes in the side of a plexiglass tank, in which the puck flies around through the air instead of along a flat surface. It's fun, but expensive, loud (the air compressor), and takes up a lot of space. Ultimately, there wasn't really a market for it.
A waterproof garment made of seagull feathers still attached to the hide.
It's the current favorite choice in a brand name from respondents in a test market survey for a new lipstick that 'plumps up your lips and makes them totally kissable!"
The advertising guys from the lipstick company's creative division came with the concept from a portmanteau word meaning voluptuous [or perhaps volatile] + pucker.)
Volapuks are spirits that haunt libraries, especially old libraries with lots of ancient books and manuscripts.
Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
http://stephen-has-spoken.blogspot.com/
volapuk verb. 1. The act of surreptitiously applying a gentle poke into the fleshy folds of the person sitting next to you to guess what their BMI might be.
A person should only volapuk someone they are familiar with. volapuking strangers might get one into a lot of trouble.
Now this is one of my specialities! A volapuk is a goodly amount of thick, erm...I have to say it, vomit which lands with a satisfying splat on any suitable hard surface. Afterwhich, it's usually time to seek out some more food.
tgw44.blogspot.com
volapuk is the sound an elephant's foot makes as he/she pulls it out of the mud. Accent is on the first syllable.
VOL a puk'
Apologies for the lengthy description... I hope it's worth it! :)
Volapuk is a game that originated in Morocco, during the particularly wet summer of 1980.
As I understand it, the number of voles that live in Morocco are kept under control by predators and the climate, which rarely gets wet enough to provide sufficient foliage for the Voles to reproduce at any worthwile rate... except during this particular year when the plants all flourished, and as such so did the Vole population.
One particularly disgruntled farmer, Milok Kaballdah was so plagued by the overpopulation of Voles in his area that he took matters into his own hands and fashioned a curved bat out of Thuya wood (in much the same shape as a hockey stick) and would patrol the borders of his crops looking for Voles, when he found one or many he would swing wildly at them in anger and bat them onto the neighbouring farmers property.
This tactic initially worked well for Milok, but eventually his neighbour, Graslev discovered what had been going on, and as such also created a bat and started hitting his Voles back at Milok.
and so the game of Volapuk was created !
That year, as the Vole population boomed, so did the popularity of this bizarre passtime until all Moroccan farmers were soon batting voles across boundries in an attempt to protect their crop.
Eventually the Vole population returned back to normal, but the farmers having enjoyed this passtime perhaps a little too much, organise a giant game of Volapuk to occur on the 5th July each year, whereby all the farmers from a particular region get together and (using specially bred Voles of a large size and sturdy constitution) release a few hundred voles into a field and smack them at each other in a humorous fashion!
If you have never witnessed a moroccan game of Volapuk in full flow, try and imagine if you could the Spanish Tomato festival combined with Whacking Day from 'The Simpsons'
Sorry all you Vole lovers, the passtime may be cruel, but tradition is tradition !
I was going to leave a definition, but I must bow to the superiority of the Greedy Biscuit Baron.
That is all.
It's the sound made by a table-tennis player in an extremely bad mood.
Apologies for the double post :-)
Volapuk is the name of an embroidery stitch that makes nubbies on the top side of the fabric; multiples of the volapuk stitch are often used to produce the illusion of waving grains of wheat. The word is believed to be of a Balkan origin. Glad I could enlighten you!
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