P

"Is he pace (pah-chay) or just Mediterranean?" is International English slang that developed to navigate around a delicate question New World women have difficulty deciphering. Ashley wanted Cosimo, but everytime she saw him out he was surrounded by eight other men, often leaning on each other with arms embraced. When she finally got the courage to approach the gang with the guise of a need for language tutoring, it's true that Cosimo did jump at the offer to help -- but only after he kissed all his friends goodbye, twice! Hmmm. Then, as Ashley and Cosimo were finishing their cafe's during her "tutoring", Cosimo's friend Gian Luca zipped up on his Vespa waving a rainbow flag across which read "pace", Italian for "peace", because he was on his way to the manifestation in piazza maggiore. Cosimo pecked Ashley on the cheek, hopped on the back of Gian Lu's bike, grabbed his waist and off they went.

-- Chris Leo


Put passassinate into the same category as “conversate” and “irregardless” as words that only the slickest litigators have succeeded in convincing us should rightfully exist. I’ve heard “irregardless” (as opposed to the more economic “regardless”) advocated for as a way to stress a serious laissez-faire ‘tude, like girregardless (giro for "spin"). Like “However many ways this spins style-double-triple-quadruple-double-trip-triple–whatever-whenever-on-off, irregardless I am with you”. “Conversate” (as opposed to “converse”) is said to be a conversation on either the verge of argument or a conversation when only one person is pontificating and hence the staccato “ate” ending rather than the smoother “erse” (aint 'nem erses smooth?). When someone says “We’re just conversating” don’t believe them. It means things are about to heat up. Fine. “Passassinate”, “passion” + “assassinate”, is a mixture of love and rage at the same time. Great, this is an important concept. The problem is that passion once already encompassed both ideas. Though the Proto-Indo-European root pei meant simply “to hurt”, when the Romans got a hold of it, acting as Romans did, they threw some love in and gave us fodder for a million novels. The Passion of Christ is a remnant of this middle passage of “passion”. You can still feel the pain in it though, can’t you? So what to do? Rehabilitate the rage in passion or keep splintering these words into ever smaller and smaller nuances? River Plates leans on the side of accepting all words and remaining patient while they settle in or drop out. In the case of “passion” versus “passassinate”, though both words embrace the same concepts, the balance of concepts within each word differs slightly: love is the primary part of “passion”, whereas pure physicality outweighs the love in “passassinate”. For example, one could not say, “I have an intense passion for your tits.” One could however say, “Mmm girl, you leave me with no other option but to passassinate that ass like only a buttcher could. Diddy-blau!” See the inarrabato entry for a compromise between the two terms that's struck an even balance between all elements at hand.

-- Chris Leo


Paza, “crazies for peace on earth”, is a bityrrhenic Believer in both sound and Sight. It arrived in Spain with the Roman legionnaires who lived a life of total war. For them a pazza dia (“crazy” in Italian like “Potsie” from Happy Days +“day” in Spanish) was a day without fighting. These dates were so rare indeed that the gracing of one came with the exclamatory toast which in due time transubstantiated itself to “paz dio!” (“peaceful god” in Spanish). But as great parties only begat greater parties, “paz dio!” found it’s place at the banquet every night as demagogues enlivened through demitasse imbibing whether a battle was fought that day or not. By the time of the Inquisition, “paz dio!”, losing all semblance of its initial peace, had become but a godless rallying cry for pain, and hence, with its reintroduction to Italy across the Tyrrhenian it approached its former form again as the dreadfilled on the shores learned to fear the crucifix atop the cruzieros, “Paza!”

The good news is that the Paza bring with them excellent words since everything is a sign from God. For example, though the Latin word sonare ("to sound") was used for playing the guitar in Italy, it was the Latin word tocare ("to touch") that took root in Spain because the possessed performers appeared "touched". Or "loco" (Spanish for "crazy") has duel competing religious etymologies, having either come directly from the Latin "loco" for "of a place" (as in, of this world, not godly) or as a word turned back upon the Moors with their own Arabic "lauqa" for "fool, maniac".

Putz once meant “shiney jewelry” to Yiddish speaking Jews, but through the Paza rich past it’s lost its luster. In general, luster is something one loses and "puzza" in Italian is "stink".

-- Chris Leo


Peninsulating, from the Latin paeninsula for “almost an island”, brings with it none of the drastic reactions properly isolating, insulating, or insulting someone can. Depending on one’s degree of pessimism or optimism, peninsulation either gradually and subtly kills the soul or finally puts one at peace away from the races. Whereas continents are thought to be “held together” (from the Latin con + tinere) we all know the daily struggle threatens to break us apart. On the other hand, the extreme tranquility of islands tends to implode upon itself and freak out (think Manhattan, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Montreal, Ibiza, England, etc) when not lounging. A peninsula however keeps one feeling connected but not bound. Days, weeks, years fly by on the peninsula and rarely does something feel missed. While you spent hours climbing up that palm tree to grab the coconut, finding a method to open it, and debating what booze to fill it with in Baja did it cross your mind that opportunities might be dissolving up in Los Angeles? Nope, in fact you felt closer there than you did the weekend you spent in Santa Catalina. And while you read your morning paper about the news from Den Haag on the terrazzo in Taranto (on a peninsula in a peninsula on a gulf in a sea!) do you remember feeling either eager to get back or anxious to get away? Neither. On the beach in Miami I saw an old New York Jew who came down to die and a new Colombian getting set to make his mark and all the peninsulating left me feeling absolutely anachronistic.

-- Chris Leo


peripathetic is the frustration the ADHD mind suffers due to the cogs of his head being powered by the pounding of his feet. His thoughts are generated in bursts during movement and instantly dissolved in cessation. Like a hummingbird, his is a life of only sweet nectar and asymmetrical flight juxtaposed by narcoleptic comas with no gears in between to jot it all down. The peripathetic is the Buddha Lin Chi tells us to kill when we meet him on the road.

-- Chris Leo


Philosovy is pontificated by philosoniks in a distanced manner that no matter how much you may agree with the meat of their fiery rhetoric finds you still looking for reasons to disagree because philosovy is just so annoying, so out of touch. Philosovers know not how to shit-shoot with those they advocate for nor even their best friends because when personal exposure is at risk this whole studied safety net threatens to unwind. We are talking about big issues here workers, big big issues that deal with many many people at a clip; if we stop to think about each and every person the manifestation and blanketed anger won’t make any sense and we’ll be left with no “no’s” to rally behind. What street will we parade down then? We are looking to place blame and drench pity and those words dissolve away when the microscope appears. No, philosovers prefer to keep the issues at arms length barraging their tutorials directly from the podium, not the bar stool (whether in substance it be or not be a bar stool) when you just came looking for deeper things to get into like “what’s up?” or “how are things with you and Claudia?” Claudia? How can we think about Claudia singular at a time like this when Claudia plural needs our patronage, comrade?

philosophy + Soviet = if only I could clone me a drove you’d march as my Samaritan and newspeak my savage shortcomings into “cultural”, and Claudia would thank you when you pulled her hair as is the custom of the proud and ancient society of 1081 1st Ave, apt #2C, NYC, NY 10021

-- Chris Leo


Pompieno and pompigro are related calls of distress that if go unabused, seconded by River Plates, deserve your benevolent hands in rescue. An appeal for “pompieno”, from “pompino” (Italian slang for “fellatio”, literally "the pump") + “pieno” (“full” in Italian), comes after a man forgetting to first empty out enters into a dinner date randied already and finding himself unable to control his fretful nerves during the course of the meal, overeats at the table and loses the drive he raced into it with. The larger problem is, this demanding desire remains behind sans drive and puppy dog eyes seek pity in the form of a little pompieno so the anguished can sleep tight. Have pity on him, his well intentioned though feigned attempt at civilization for you was what got him into this mess. A plea for “pompigro”, “pompino” + “pigro” (Italian for “lazy”) after a full day at work when everything is backed up and trying to come out at once also often finds some merit to collapse on. We say the order to properly prep this body for a peaceful night ahead should follow like this: shit, snack, pompigro, nap.

-- Chris Leo


Postres, "dessert" in Spanish, are (naturally) felt embossed posters that captivate stoners in a black light haze, i.e. "sweeeeeet".

-- Chris Leo


Praphetic. When the passing of the Sun, Venus, and Jupiter inside an aphetic place happen at once new life is brought to all. An aphetic word arrives at our lips sans the sound of the first syllable or letter, yet it doles rather the tools of death! Through cover of a ghosted vowel, only an owl's made aware of the furtiveness of the fledgling (e)squire. If successful in his siege, his (k)nife will have cleaved, the victim deceived mistook (a)cute for the cute of youth, and he (e)vanishes without a clue. Tomorrow a banquet will be held and if the (e)bishop(os) is pleased (k)nighthood will be his!

pro + aphetic = the Prophet of the last breath before new life

-- Chris Leo


Precrastination is an efficient tool in assuring everything you need to get done today gets done. First, prepare the daily list you have little faith in daily. Second, make the opposing list of everything else you can do today to avoid list one. Third, throw list one out. Fourth, stare pavlovically at the ingrained weight of the only list left, list two, and watch as list one takes flight while you procrastinate beginning list two (henceforth thought of simply as "the list"). Fifth, don’t get stuck thinking of this definition as a recrastination because it is not – look, I am out of here before this paragraph has barely begun.

precrastination = make sure “meet Juan for mojitos” makes both lists

-- Chris Leo


Prepositional or conjunctive people have found the key and it was right under our noses. By swapping the given words in positions they’re normally expected to be found with other idiomatic conjunctives, the arbitrary fabric of everything is revealed. As linguist Marco Barone says, “When I asked what’s the why it fucked out and cheersed me 'round.” To fulfill an unwritten chapter of my own bio I took a job as a cook in an upscale restaurant in Gramercy Park. Late one night when us cooks accidentally bumped into the waitstaff at a nearby nightclub someone’s drunk gnosis caught the joy in my eye as I watched the two antagonistic groups awkwardly socialize with each other. “You are neither hanging-out nor studying-up, you’re just a speye hanging-up and studying-out!” “How gives?” I pleaded, “You put me all wrong.”

-- Chris Leo


Prodigal is the act of Proto-Indo-European words returning home. No one's sure exactly when it was they left the Indus Valley and only some can still recall a vague idea of how they appeared epochs ago in their youth, but one thing is certain, they've both grown and been bruised magnificently along this odyssey. The semantical mistake is to view these prodigal paroles as American words invading European sentences when in fact this oversimplifies the intercourse. For example, when "blowout sale" appears on shop windows in Oslo, street vendors sell "hot dogs" in Paris, and Italians watch "films" on Saturday evenings, near-sightedness often has critics believing these words spontaneously generated in the New World and now threaten to contaminate purer tongues abroad. As proud and pompous as Americans may be though, it is only the rare rogue scientist once a century who takes credit for spontaneosly generating anything at all. In fact, long ago these words set out on caravan, canoe, camel, campaign, car, train, plane; through Persia, Greece, Rome, Tokyo, and Winnipeg; through rain, wind, battles, beds, maniacs' heads, and ponderous pens. Every land they left was once a land they arrived in new. Yes, they've changed, of course they've changed, but the important thing is that they, better late than never, are beginning to return home. Welcome them back! Slaughter the fattened lamb! And celebrate! Celebrate them today because soon enough they too will give way to new words of their own who will then part these parts in search of adventure, ambition, appetite, and wishing.

-- Chris Leo