Building our vocabulary

The following definitions are not from Webster’s or the OED:

vegetarian, n. a person who avoids meat and eats only vegetables.

seminarian, n. a person who eats only seeds.

Schwarzeneggerländer, n. An inhabitant of California.

Leningrad, prop. n. former name of St. Petersburg, Russia, from 1924 to 1991.

Undergrad, prop. n. the St. Petersburg subway system.

Paradigms, pl. n. for definition click here.

Bebop, n. 1. a sophisticated type of jazz developed after the Second World War, employing experimental tonal and rhythmic forms; 2. the name of one of the juvenile dinosaurs in Barney and Friends.

Parallel fifths, pl. n. (music), for definition click here.

Relativism, n. a variant of ancestor worship.

faux pas, n. surrogate dads.

Broadmindedness, n. the mental state predisposing one to accept the truth claims of a plethora of mutually incompatible reductionisms.

Narrowmindedness, n. the stubborn refusal to admit that the sheer variety in the cosmos might be reduced to a single key element.

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