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In response to my last post about scholarly whimsy my friend JDL has told me of a number of humorous entries in Chambers Dictionary. Some of these are still there or were in the edition I have (10th, 2006), but unfortunately some have fallen victim to the spread of blandness in modern life.
The picture illustrates:
éclair: a cake, long in shape but short in duration…
Some are rather waspish:
Agapemone: a religious community of men and women whose ‘spiritual marriages’ were in some cases not strictly spiritual
fish: to catch or try to catch or obtain fish, or anything that may be likened to a fish (such as seals, sponges, coral, compliments, information or husbands)
picture restorer: one who cleans and restores and sometimes ruins old pictures
And some involve sly puns:
xylophagan: one of the Xylophaga, a genus of boring bivalves
You can see these and others on this page.
Photo credit: Public domain image by Azh7
This (from the page you recommended) says a lot about human nature:
JAPANESE CEDAR: a very tall Japanese conifer (Cryptomeria japonica) often dwarfed by Japanese gardeners
And from the same page, here’s my favourite concept (Sorry to be so vulgar):
CALLIPYGOUS adj having beautiful buttocks