Dear Mirriam (or Webster)

Dear dictionary people,

First off, thank you. You’re not like those punk bitches at Oxford Dictionary, who succumb to pressure annually to add new official words, which is like giving someone who can’t ride a bike your car keys; you’re over-arming.

Particularly now, when the world’s last remaining superpower is led by a man with a fourth-grade reading level (and I challenge him to a word-off with my first grade nephew). Last year, Oxford officially recognized “hangry,” an ad idea for Snickers candy bars.

So kudos for being selective. New words are necessary; annual publicity stunts are not. Thank you for being as fluid with language as it is with us.

In that spirit, I’d like to suggest some words that are not in your dictionary, but perhaps should be. Here are the words and their suggested definitions. And I swear, not one of them was inspired by a candy bar.

Philosophize (verb): To expound on a philosophy.

We have proselytize, theorize, realize. Why not for deeper thinking? And it’s much shorter than the accepted alternative.

Nonymous (adjective): To attribute a media story to a named source.

If anonymous is a word, like amoral, apolitical, asexual, etc., why is there no opposite?

Embering (verb): To burn red-hot after a flame dies down.

Example: “He may not have released new music recently, but he embered to the end.”

Fuckery (noun): A bureaucratic mess.

Self explanatory. When you’re asked for the fifth time to fill out a duplicate at the DMV, you’re experiencing governmental fuckery.

Kramer (verb): To barge in without knocking.

Example: “Did you see that video of the professor with the wild daughter? She Kramered the whole TV interview!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VygKjquFVSw

In honor of the national holiday, a pigskin-led Factslap edition:

According to a Wall Street Journal study in 2010 based on four broadcasts, a standard NFL game features just 10 minutes and 43 seconds of action. Commercials account for nearly 60 minutes of the three hour affairs. When the networks are showing the game, the bulk of the time is spent either on replays or shots of players huddling.
According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, about 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress, after just two years of retirement.
Larry Izzo of New England Patriots once had a bowel movement on the sideline and got the game ball for his trouble because he did it without anybody noticing.
NFL cheerleaders are only paid $50 a game.
The actress who plays Phyllis in The Office was once an NFL cheerleader.
About 9 out of 10 people with lupus are women.
Scientists discovered in 2015 that there are 8 times more trees on earth than previously thought (three trillion).
The speed of the wind has fallen by 60% in the last 30 years.
Despite spending half his career in the saddle, actor Clint Eastwood is allergic to horses.
People’s body temperature drops when they watch videos of other people putting their hands into cold water.
Instead of a Foreign Office, the Roman Empire had a “Bureau of Barbarians.”
A dozen camels were disqualified in 2018 from a Saudi beauty pageant for receiving Botox injections to make them more attractive.
President Trump asked the Guggenheim Museum to lend him a Van Gogh for the White House. Their counter-offer: a solid gold toilet.