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| double click a word for its definition and pronunciation. |
 
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First, some words to the wise, guys.
Do not believe anything you read in the pseudodictionary. We make the claim that we try to be family friendly. We think we are, for the most part, but that’s just our opinion, just what we claim. Whether or not we are is ultimately in the eye of the beholders — i.e., you: our visitors — and you may change your mind from visit to visit. Always bear in mind that our lexicon is not a real dictionary. The similarities end with our entries being in alphabetic order, providing pseudo-definitions, and giving examples of use for the words and phrases. Occasionally, a submitter will suggest how to pronounce her offering. Otherwise, you’re on your own to figure out how to say what you’re looking at. Who’s to tell you you’re wrong? From time to time, “slots” in the lexicon part of the site are filled (or filled out) with other kinds of material that may be accessible to visitors one way or another. Thus, you are strongly advised not to believe anything you read in the pseudodictionary (the pd to insiders, those in the know). We may have some nefarious, hidden agenda to corrupt your morals or rot your brain. Surely you already know that’s what we’re doing with the made-up words. We keep telling you those aren’t real words. Our foremost mission in our dotage is to make the pd a repository of your made-up words, even though real words inevitably slip in. Mostly, we’re the ones doing that — because we love words and want to share the ones we know or learn with you. It’s our site — we’ll do with it as we damn well please. All right, within reason — as we see reason. Usually, we don’t go out of our way to offend anyone. We rarely set out to do so. Sometimes, though, dagnabbit, something sets what remaining hair we have on fire and we get a bit impetuous or rambunctious — for folks over — uhh, 30. It’s worst when our bunions are hurting or our gout’s acting up. We can usually manage to hold our water — take that literally — but our mouths and fingers have a way of doing things without consulting our brains. Especially on Saturday nights. That’s date night for our generation, and you’ve heard how excited geezers can get on date night, haven’t you? Didn’t believe the stories, sonny? Well, they’re true. Best we can remember, anyways. We’ll try not to violate copyrights or break any other laws. That’s U.S. laws only. We don’t have a clue what’s legal in other countries that have less Freedom of Speech than we do. Let me repeat: Do not believe anything you read in the pseudodictionary. Do not take us seriously. Do not believe anything we say. Seek wisdom elsewhere. In particular, for those visitors who are minors or students, do not cite the pd as an authority or source for anything. If you do, your teacher may give you the dreaded automatic F. While you might occasionally find some accurate and even truthful content, it’s probably due to an oversite or slip-up by one of our crack editors. Think of us as those old, old people working the polls on Election Day. Seriously, do you trust them to have any idea what they’re doing? I’ve worked the polls. Trust me, they don’t. (Now, did you trust me? What have I been telling you? . . . By the way, did you notice that I used oversite above? That was intentional.) Caveat emptor: Buyer beware. Beware of geeks Greeks (or anyone else) bearing gifts. Do you remember that we’ve made the claim that the site is completely free? The problem with that, of course, is that you don’t know who we are. You would be behaving foolishly to take us at or word — or our many words, since we speak in paragraphs. Other than that, we not only make up words, we make up stuff. Keep that in mind. Always. We make no pretense of being bonafide lexicographers, not by any stretch of the imagination. We. Are. Not. All we are is a few old geezers (American use, not British) playin’ around with words and havin’ some fun — hopin’ to make it possible for you to have some fun, too. QED.
Do not believe anything you read in the pseudodictionary. And now for something completely different: Privacy Policy We take our privacy policy seriously. We do not display e-mail addresses. This prevents spammers from “scraping” them. We will make changes if we need to to keep your contact details secure. Except for a request for permission to use a created word or what we see as an egregious violation of our guidelines, we will not share your e-mail address with any third party unless required to by law. Otherwise, contact information will be disclosed only to those who maintain or own the site. For the insufficiently aware, those who set policy can also make exceptions to policy when they are so minded. Would-be submitters who deliberately violate the guidelines in an egregious fashion: If you piss one of our editors off, not only will what you submit not be accepted, your e-mail address may be displayed along with sarcastic — nay, surly — comments. Since this paragraph is part of the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, displaying an e-mail address for a rejected submittal will not be considered a violation of our privacy policy. What we take care not to reveal is e-mail addresses for accepted submittals. E-mail addresses are revealed in the forum. If you add your e-mail address to our mailing list, we may send you newsletters, announcements, and the very rare tutorial. We will not send you spam — i.e., unsolicited commercial e-mail. If you include your e-mail address with your entry, we will notify you when your word is accepted. Other than that, you might get a note from one of our editors telling you how much she enjoys your creative efforts. Your name and URL as entered on the «send to a friend» form are stored as a cookie on your computer, for convenience only. We do not store the e-mail addresses of friends when you use «send to a friend». We have no interest in information about specific visitors and make no effort to collect or examine it. Non-personal data is automatically collected for the purpose of tracking web statistics. This information consists of standard server logs and internet environment data such as your browser and operating system. Terms of Use Submitted words should be in the public domain. Please do not submit words you or another party claim ownership to. We may want to recompile and edit submittals for commercial use. We reserve the right to edit submittals before they are added to the pd database. Pseudodictionary and pseudodictionary.com are trademarks. Pseudodictionary.com owns copy rights to the site layout and design and original graphics, as well as to the database of definitions (descriptions) and examples. We will actively pursue copyright infringement redress for anyone who duplicates our content without permission or otherwise abuses the fair use provisions of copyright law. The words themselves may be copied, distributed, and used in drunken conversations; however, verbatim collections taken from our database and used elsewhere are subject to legal action. For permission to use our copyrighted material, ask HD. When the pd was put up for sale, HD and Marty bought it so they could keep control of the site, its content, and its direction: fun, family friendly, and strictly non-commercial. And occasionally (if not deliberately) educational. They’re generally receptive to letting others use material from the site, as long as pd.com gets credit and is linked to. They’ve even given permission to several non-commercial entities to reproduce the lexicon in full. However, if you want to publish a book using our copyrighted material and then sell the book for beaucoup bucks — we want to know about it. We’ll more than likely want to be paid. Nota bene: When we don’t go for free, we don’t want to go cheap. Unless we talk you into paying us an outrageously large amount of money, we’ll probably look for someone to give it to. Anything else isn’t worth the tax hassle. Work with us and we’ll figure out a way for you to make a tax deductible contribution — to an entity of our choosing, not us. Do you want to use a word as a name for a website? What’s the nature of your site? Is it commercial or non-commercial? A site for education, for fun, or for news or political comment? Other than using the word for a site name, what do you plan to use it for? (If there’s money to be made, we might not object to getting a share. But it would have to be worth any tax hassle.) Will it involve products or services? Merchandise such as ball-point pens, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, or t-shirts? Advertising revenue? Greeting cards? Is it a nice site or a vice site? Is it a site we wouldn’t want to be connected with in any way? If it’s a word HD or Marty came up with, even though they’re unlikely to use it for a site name, they may want to keep the rights to pass on to their children for their use. Ask anyway. A lot of people who use the Internet have the attitude that rules are made to be broken. Our saying that “Submitted words should be in the public domain” does not, in fact, mean that any particular word in the pd will be. Several of our own submittals are not. Except for them, we hope submittals are in the public domain, but we can’t be sure. It’s not feasible for us to check all of the words submitted to make sure that’s the case. Our “rule” is intended for our protection, not for anyone else’s. Look at the paragraph following the one quoted above: “Pseudodictionary.com owns copy rights . . . to the database of definitions and examples.” There’s also a copyright notice on each page. Many of the definitions and examples have significant input from our editors, making them at least in part pd.com’s intellectual property. That’s one reason we claim ownership. Another is that hundreds of the words were made up by the site principals and editors. They use multiple submitter names, so it’s not sufficient to check entries submitted by “Paul Jarvis, “HD Fowler,” or “Marty D’Mello.” Those are only three of many aliases they use. Innocently, of course. Unless the word, definition, and example are a site principal’s creation, we are unable to give anyone permission to use them. We could say we have no objection to someone’s using a word that appears to be in the public domain, but that’s as far as we would go. If the word, definition, and example all appear to “belong” to someone else, we may be able to put someone who wants permission to use a word in touch with its creator. To do that, we’d want permission to pass along names, e-mails, and e-mail addresses. After that, it will be between the requester and the submitter — except that pd.com must be credited appropriately. If things get to that point, let us know exactly how you’ll handle the credit and we’ll let you know whether or not it will make us happy. Making us happy is more important than you can imagine. Pseudodictionary is not responsible for material at linked sites. Do you have your heart set on finding the “naughty bits” in the pd? You know we have some, don’t you? Since you’ve been patient and read to this point, you’re about to learn a secret. We figure most visitors who bother to read this far are older, so we’ll view what you’ll find out as being in line with our aim to be family friendly. What you’ll see won’t be really, really bad, anyway. Even the censored language is seldom as rough as that in R-rated movies. I’m sure (truthiness) it’s familiar to most teenagers. They may not use it in front of Mom or Dad or in mixed company — may not — but I’d bet my toupée many of them know it and use it among their friends. My guess is that mimicking the coarser talk of adults hasn’t changed that much since I was a foul-mouthed teenager.
In what follows, replace { with < and } with > in your searches. We use We really are doing this just for fun. (That’s why we reserve the right to give your first-born child a funny name.) Completely innocent fun except for the occasional use of a rude word or phrase. Since the message boards are run separately from the dictionary part of the site, rough language and links to objectionable sites are more likely to creep in there. Our editors do a good job monitoring the message boards, but are unable to catch everything. Mea culpa and fair warning: A pseudo-word entry made by one of the editors or owners is far more likely to contain a link to a “naughty” site than an approved entry from a non-privileged submitter. Still, we do what we reasonably can to avoid linking to pornographic sites. We’ll never do it on purpose. If you have any concerns about how we run the site, let us know. Thank you for visiting. Please enjoy your stay. The privacy policy & terms of use can change without notice. |
| privacy policy & terms of use: seek wisdom elsewhere. |
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