Friday, August 21, 2009

About "Office life defined"

Recently I re-read the brilliant psuedo-dictionary "The meaning of Liff" by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. To summarize this book: "In life and, indeed, in liff, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist. This text uses place names to describe some of these meanings."
The authors collected hundreds of these definitions and labeled them with authentic names of British towns and villages.

A few good examples which we all can relate to:

ADLESTROP (n.) That part of a suitcase which is designed to get snarled up on conveyor belts at airports. Some of the more modern adlestrop designs have a special 'quick release' feature which enables the case to lip open at this point and fling your underclothes into the conveyor belt's gearing mechanism.

POPCASTLE (n.) Something drawn or modelled by a small child which you are supposed to know what it is.

GLENTIES (pl.n.) Series of small steps by which someone who has made a serious tactical error in a conversion or argument moves from complete disagreement to wholehearted agreement.

Then I realized that the universe called "the office" also has a wide spectrum of feelings, experiences, characters etc. for which we need a definition.

Like Douglas Adams I will try to capture these definitions and label them. Do send me your suggestions, so we can make this into the ultimate office pseudo-dictionary.

- Dennie Heye Bookmark and Share

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