a good day for neologism (a bad day for neologists)
Tuesday, August 10, 2004 at 12:35AM Without disclosing full details of its genesis, I will inform you that I've created a new word from handy preexisting ones, the better for semantic range and flexibility: sockbison, s. from OE socc "light slipper" & L. bison "wild ox": 1. rar. much as you would imagine, a species of pygmy American bison (tax. bison bisonum) accustomed to living in people's socks, where it is said to favour a warm moist environment - 1932 "It is imperative in the tropics to check one's shoes every morning for nesting sockbisons, as their hooves can deliver a crippling blow to the toes and ankles, to say nothing of their vigorous headbutt"; 2. obs. a sort of crude ordnance, reputedly derived from a Frankish sling-style weapon, employed in the War of the Roses - c1450 "A traitor shotte a Gonne, and this soccebison smot the good Earl of Salisbury"; 3. coll. male genitals - 2004 "My sockbison hurts from when you kicked it after I made up the word 'sockbison'".
I'm off to go hang around an active volcano in the Philippines for a week. The next thing you hear from me will be a tired grumbling from a hotel somewhere near LAX.
Reader Comments (3)
Good sir. Methinks it behooves me to ask you if perchance you might amend your second definition of sockbison. I ask this of you for two reasons; the first being that the War of the Roses in fact started in 1455, and the second being that Richard Neville, said Earl of Salisbury of whom you speak, was in fact not "smot by a soccebison", but rather captured and beheaded after the Battle of Wakefield in 1460.
Yours in Perspicacity, Anon.
Helvetica:
Beheading by sockbison is a slow, painful death; today it's employed by Georgian mafia on moles and hedgehogs.
Yes, the Earl of Salisbury was beheaded, but he was also smot by a Traitor with a Gonne. It didn't kill him. On the matter of the date you have me dead to rights.