Friday, April 20, 2012

Round Three: Dictionary Game

The word for this round is "eromancer". Have fun!

10 comments:

Rob said...

eromancer n. Internet slang for a romance author whose work only appears in Kindle, Nook, and other e-reader formats.

Rob said...

Oops! I forgot to use the word in a sentence!

The eromancer argued that a file is the same as a book, but without actual paper.

J.E. Stanley said...

eromancer, n. One who stays in constant flight. From the nonexistent Latin word "erus," meaning "air" and the neo-KretziKan word "mancer" meaning "traveler."
"An eromancer would perish instantly if his feet were to ever touch the earth."

Geoffrey A. Landis said...

Eromancer, n.: variant spelling of aeromancer: One who practices aeromancy.
Aeromancy, n: to make love on an airplane. Portmanteau word coined by G. K. Chesterton in 1922 from aero and romance.
"Witherspoon cut a dashing figure as a pilot and an eromancer."

pottygok said...

@Rob: Hmmm...perhaps I did mistype the word, and it's eRomancer as opposed to eromancer! Funfunfun!

@JE: Your sentence makes one wonder how an eromancer would perish. How, exactly, are such wings clipped?

@Geoff: I had not realized that G K Chesterton, among his many feats, had invented a literary precursor for the Mile High Club. Go him!

Marcus said...

eromancer - one who engages in eromance; a virtual lover, esp. one who never meets his or her counterpart in the meat world.


Among Eromancers

I scroll through the long blogroll questioning;
The sock puppet of a grumpy troll replies;
The bloggers yearn to monetize the thing
They did for fun. Now they all despise
Each other, making up the mud they’ll sling
Responding to some other blogger’s lies
Whose momentary anger will require
Another flame to fight a fire with fire.

And thinking of those fits of grievanced rage
I read one blogger here, another there,
And wonder if she blared so at that age —
For even metered satirists can share
That love for chewing scenery on stage.
Did she too parse such trivia with such care?
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me now a virtual child.

Love is blossoming and dancing where
No body can be bruised, where only soul
Engages online soul, and each affair
Is bleary-eyed with irony, as droll
And ineffectual as any prayer.
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
That’s how we know romance from eromance.

pottygok said...

I'll give this a week to run, so come Friday, I'll post my reactions and responses. Please try to drum up some more submissions if you can!

pottygok said...

So the WiFi didn't work at the hotel, so I'll judge the contest now.

It's interesting to see how many folks responded to the "romance" part of the spelling, creating limited results. Marcus and Rob seemed to be on a such a similar wave length that I wonder if their particles didn't switch midblog.

Geoff, our SECOND PLACE WINNER, created a unique definition based on some dodgy etymology, but got props for the use of "portmanteau," thus squeaking him ahead of the others in the "romance" crowd by the Rule of Cool.

Speaking of dodgy etymology (and an apparent complete lack of Latin knowledge), our winner this week based both on uniqueness and niftiness is J. E. Stanley!!!

Woo-Whoo!!!

pottygok said...

Oh, just in case anyone was wondering, this is the REAL definition:


Eromancy is one of six different divination practices by the Persians using air and water. The diviner, or EROMANCER, covered his head in a napkin and exposed to the air a vase filled with water, over which he muttered in a low voice the objects of their desire. If the surface of the air showed bubbles, it was regarded as a positive prognostication.

In short, it's a magician who read the future in the bubbles of water.

Go forth and poem about that character, if ye dare!

Rob said...

Didn't Lawrence Welk do that, but with champagne?

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau