Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Inspired partly by the almost-doings in Wisconsin (stymied so far, last I checked, by Democratic legislators using a trick made famous by a Republican's Republican), as well as assorted other curiosities like the anti-discrimination bill that strangely leaves out the 'public accomodation' language one usually expects, the attempt to redefine rape (the only-violent-rape-counts business that I've misplaced the links to) or redefine rape victims, and the strange "our first priority is jobs so that's why we're banging on the abortion issue" stuff ...

... And inspired at least as much by my mother having handed me a copy of Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous^[2] Words^[1] ...

... I offer unto y'all this unfortunately useful word:

dysnomy: n. bad legislation; passing bad laws.

Another word in Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary is 'cacophrenic', which Mrs. Byrne lists as "pertaining to an inferior intellect" (and is defined elsewhere as "having a mental illness"), but which I would have otherwise been tempted to interpret as a more polite synonym for a word suggested by my mother, that I haven't found in a dictionary: 'scatophrenic'. I'll let each of you decide whether you want to translate that as "shit-for-brains" or "poopyhead", but either way, it seems to go along with dysnomy.

[0] Yeah, footnotes intentionally referenced out of order.

[1] Heifetz, Josepha. (1974). Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words: Gathered from numerous and diverse Authoritative Sources. Seacaucus, NJ: University Books/Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8216-0203-9

[2] Even accounting for her explanation that some words are included simply for having multiple definitions that contrast amusingly, well, either my vocabulary is even larger than my ego, or a bunch of her words are hardly obscure (even for 1974). But there are enough words I didn't know to be interesting anyhow, even when I refuse to count the ones I'd never seen before but were obvious from their roots, like 'dendrochronology'.