I

Idolatrine worship is submission in bent prostration to porcelain gods accompanied by the speaking of tongues. An idolatte is the slight of slipping spirits in with creams that leads to this plastered repentance into alabaster vessels. Slavoratory prayers are false promises of tomorrow’s abstinent servitude offered from bathroom floors in exchange for it all to just go away.

idol + latrine = when Exodus' list exits us in fits

-- Chris Leo


Inarrabato is the combination of three Italian words to describe one emotion Freud would have told us exists in each word individually already: “Innamorato” (in love) + “arrabbiato” (angry) + “arrapato” (horny). Italians would have then told Freud, ”Old news.” For a less suaver exploration of the same subject visit the passassinate entry.

-- Olayinka Fagbayi, Chris Leo


Infiermo, "enfermo" (sick in Spanish)+ "infierno" (Spanish hell), is an addition of two negatives that amounts to one bombastic muthafuckin' positive: SICCCKKKK AS HEEELLLLLLLL. "Son, ya heard!?! That vocal manipulation on the new Snoop cut 'Sexual Eruption' is INFIERMO. IN-FI-ERMO, kid."
"Hail Yes doctor, administer me some aloe vera for the burn induced from those infiermic beats. Jaysus!"

-- Alley Deheza, Chris Leo


Inginious. Though gin was first marketed in England as a health elixir, it's believed to be a direct source of a population decline there in the mid-18th century. Inginious. I am even sipping on gin now as I write this to dry up my enflamed nasal cavity and it isn't working. Incredible. Despite all evidence otherwise, gin still isn’t convinced it's an enemy of the body. When quinine was used to fight malaria in the tropics in the 20th Century gin snuck itself into the tonic to ease the taste, but anyone who’s ever tasted gin knows gin eases nothing on the palette. Inginious. In fact, it was eventually the fruit juices added to mask its taste, not vice versa, that birthed the proper cocktail in Prohibition era New York. Gin is known as the “smart booze” because the bitter taste constricts one’s mouth muscles funneling the words off the tip of the tongue giving them more pricked direction than all the other boozes (which give none) thereby making one feel wicked inginious.

-- Chris Leo


Inspiteful is like when a boss wages psychological warfare on his employee via a scheming peer-to-peer guise. When I began working as a paralegal in Manhattan for this dirtbag from Long Island who returned every night to what he called “Wrong Island” my distrust was initially piqued. Traitor. When said asshole then started calling me his impiegato (“employee” in Italian) because he knew I spent the other part of my life in Italy, my disgust leaped to a boil because the only language he actually spoke couldn’t even be clasified as English. I call it simply the “language of small dicks”. You know the kind I mean? The kind that begins at an impossibly high register but still manages to flip up and slow down at the end of the sentence like only a perverted question could? So why impiegato? Because his idea was that if he could approach me at an eye-to-eye level I’d be duped into thinking we were friends and follow all his orders like a comrade-in-arms. The thing is, when impiegato is the only Italian word that made it into his lexicon, even the most unparanoid amongst us would start to hear “my imp and gatto” of which I am neither. All of my fears were confirmed once he also greeted the whole office in the morning with “Chris is going to make us coffee this morning because, seeing as he spends so much of his time in Italy, he can make a better coffee than any of us” even though we use a different machine entirely in Italy, sfigato.

insight + spite = manipulative constipated evil mastermind

-- Chris Leo


Interventors, isn’t it great, are somehow always thinking what I’m thinking. Even though they didn’t say it, they beat me to it. That’s why they like me. I'm think like they think, they just internalize their art. My humor/talent/smarts jive ‘cause, funny, that’s exactly what they’ve been up to lately as well. All the ideas that came in (“in” + the Italian “venire” for “to come” = “invent”) just never made it out because they inter + vented (from the Latin “ventus” for “wind”). But let it be noted loudly here that the same cowardice preventing interventors from officially participating also makes them easy prey to mass delusions. Seeing as there is no individual to the interventor who believes all thoughts to be shared, all of them coming from this collective “us”, they wind up placing too much faith in this “us” and thereby missing choice moments like this to shine: so speaking of wind and vents, I propose that it is one massive civil oversight across countries and centuries to build windmills vertical and not horizontal. Take a few breathes and digest. Top amongst the many benefits is that horizontal windmills would never stop spinning now would they? If I'm missing something, well at the very least couldn't they have horizontal and vertical windmills working in tandem? Expected belittling rebuttal from the interventor? Nope. This time “I was thinking the same thing” pits the interventor against society and that footing's not firm enough, whereas “there must be a reason” puts him too with society and that’s too vacuvented to vent.

-- Chris Leo


Irreversible has a reverse side, which is reverse stuck on reverse. Señor Fluffy ate poison and died just like that and am I no longer convinced the "ir" prefix is a negator, more an electrical shock indicator: ~reversible, ~regular, ~regardless (whose redundant "ir" proves it's no negator). When the shock waves cease you're left simply ill: illogical, illegal, ilreversible. When the heartbreak softens one can only hope the "il" mellows to an "in" which can vacillate between positive and negative pulls: inconceivable, incriminate, incubus, inreversible.

-- Chris Leo


Italian Brunch , or quasi-formally la prena (pranzo, "lunch + cena, "dinner"), is the activity done on the day after treking through Italian Green. It is a meal that happens between lunch and dinnertime. This differs from the American linner (lunch + dinner) which is one of several mealtimes that day, whereas Italian brunch is the only meal of the day and may last the duration of many meals combined. It's also worth noting that normal Italian dinners do not begin before 8:30 at the earliest. This means la prena generally falls around 6:30 -- the same time the proper American dinner is just beginning. Therefore, if one was to skip breakfast and lunch in the States due to fasting or a busy day, it wouldn't be improper for him to then refer to his one meal as "la prena" as long as he was sure to take it slow. Americans travelling abroad have also been known to call la prena a Spanish breakfast.

Banquet once meant "a small snack between meals". "Lunch" comes from "luncheon" from the French nonechenche for "noon drink", not food -- or if it is food, it's still barely food, coming from the Spanish lonja for "a slice". "Noon" comes from the Latin "nonus" for "nine" and was once the "ninth hour of sunlight in the day" which is three pm not twelve. "Dinner" comes from the French disner which began as breakfast. In New York, women eat in secrecy before proper dinner dates as to appear unfamished, refined, and elegant at the restaurant table. The remnants of the verb mangiare, "to eat" in Italian, are found only in animal words in English like "munch" and "manger". Which is all to say, neither the time of day nor size of meal should shock anyone when "appetite" and "petite" are such close cousins.

As you tabulate the table keep in mind that things run counter on the counter.

-- Chris Leo


Italian Green. While discussing the different regions of Italy with Laura I blashpemed just to see how it felt and because I wanted to hear myself say something out loud to decide once and for all if the thought inside my head had any real resonating strength or not. I said, yes, Tuscany may be the greenest, but if I wanted that shade of green I'd live in New York City and travel upstate when I needed nature. I said I prefered a green that was more Italian specific like the hillsides of Le Marche and Lazio.
"I know the kind of green you're talking about Chris. More like a brown, right? This is what you meant by Italian Green? Brown, eh?"

Poor brown, it's been losing an under the radar battle to green for millenia whilst the rest of the world is caught up mitigating the endless white vs black saga. Brown is not a Latin based word. Germany exported what would become "Bruno" into Italy and it took root as both a given and a surname, depending on the perceived depth of one's darkness. Italians chose not to use their own word "marrone" because Bruno conveniently already sounded like "Bruto" ("ugly"). Meanwhile, Italy exported "marrone" which took shape in the pallid North as "moron." Not fair. One etymology even has marrone coming from "amarone", "big and bitter". Another has it coming from the Arabic "marrano" which literally means "pig, swine" and was used as a form of contempt in Spain towards (brown) Moors and Jews that converted to Christianity. "Lumber" comes from the Italian province of Lombardia and everyone knows we couldn't have the brown endproduct if the trunk didn't bear green leaves first. Unfair. The brown earthen matter "Umber" comes not only from an incredibly green region of Italy, Umbria, but also comes from the Proto-Indo-European andho which means "shade" -- and again, there can be no shade if there are no green leaves to canopy over. But do not worry, brown doesn't need your pity. The many maligns have left it with brawn from the bruises and brews to soothe them, all from the same source. Occasionaly brown even wins small battles: by the time the brown trunk is scaled, one has often been known to experience vertigo amidst the vertical vert. And afterall, is there really much of a difference between the green leprechaun of Ireland and Scotlands wee goblin, the "Brownie"? Yes, whether you find it lumbersome from Swedish or cumbersome from Latin, there will always be brown where there is green, white where there is black, hatred where there is envy...

Italian Green = Brown

-- Chris Leo