#35 Telekinetiprompter

A telekinetically-controlled teleprompter.

Professor Charles Francis Xavier read from the telekinetiprompter, a device developed by Henry Philip "Hank" McCoy at the Xavier Institute, as he delivered the opening address to the U.N. General Assembly on the plight of mutants in the developing world.

Root = telekinetic + teleprompter

#34 Prepository

A syntactical suppository in the form of a preposition.

The editor spent 30 percent of her work day inserting prepositories into sentences to make them more regular.

Root = suppository + preposition

#33 Jobbesian

Of or relating to a job seeker's "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" attempt to find gainful employment in a depressed economy.

The real world, as Taylor observed, was nothing like college. First of all, there were not nearly as many Bob Marley posters around. Sure, the real world had libraries, food courts, and fitness centers. But, the libraries were filled with the homeless and unemployed. The food courts usually weren't in walking distance from where you lived and they didn't accept your student ID as a legitimate form of payment. And, fitness centers in the real world had way too many people over the age of 19. Again, your student ID got you nowhere. It was as worthless as the plastic it was fabricated from in Guangzhou. Worst of all, food and shelter aren't just there when you show up. You have to actually participate in what Taylor recalls his economics professor calling the "labor market." And this wasn't your typical labor market. It was positively jobbesian. Prospects for college grads were less than favorable, especially if you had a degree in American Auteur Theory Studies, as Taylor did. And on your resume, which disappointingly was not multiple choice, you couldn't even list your best accomplishments, like earning a Brigadier General III badge by getting to level 57 on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for Xbox.

Root = job + Hobbesian

#32 Totaliterry cloth robe

Ostentatious terry cloth robe worn by totalitarian dictators.

Geopolitics was of little interest to Milton until the toppling of the Qaddafi regime flooded the market with some of the finest terry cloth robes in the world. As a connoisseur of all things terry cloth and all things camel hair, Milton knew the opportunity of a lifetime was at hand—a chance to acquire one of Qaddafi's prized totaliterry cloth robes from an auction at Christie's. The proceeds would benefit the fledgling post-Qaddafi transitional government but that was of little concern to Milton. Acquiring a one-of-a-kind totaliterry cloth robe was paramount, and Milton had his eye on one of Qaddafi's favorites. It was made from the finest Egyptian cotton (a Father's Day gift from Mubarek) and the most luxurious camel hair in the world. Each strand of camel hair was harvested from a rare free-range two-humped Bactrian camel inhabiting the remote steppes of the Taklamakan Desert, and then meticulously hand-dyed by an artisan camel-hair dyer, using only precious natural pigments produced by indigenous Oaxacan peasants who harvest clusters of female cochineal insects from prickly pear cacti and then pulverize their oval-shaped bodies into a natural dye. As a finishing touch, master embroiderers had stitched a monogram of the infamous fist sculpture (a Herculean fist rising from the earth and crushing a U.S. fighter jet) into the left lapel of the robe. Who in their right mind would not want this robe?

As Milton signed the papers to secure a home equity line of credit on his four-bedroom Cape Cod to raise funds for the totaliterry cloth robe, he closed his eyes and imagined what the otherworldly combination of terry cloth and camel hair would feel liked on his freshly powdered skin.

Root = totalitarian + terry cloth robe

#31 Theopanspermia

Hypothesis that religious belief was introduced to humanity via extraplanetary viral transmission.  
Man at bus stop: "Do you have the time?"

Me: "It's, uh, 4:37."

Man at bus stop: "Good. Now listen. Do you believe in God?"

Me: "Not really."

Man at bus stop: "The belief in God, in a God, whether it's polytheism or monotheism, it doesn't matter. The source is the same. It's a sickness."

Me: "Yeah..."

Man at bus stop: "No, I mean that literally. It's literally a sickness; it's an infection, a viral infection. From outer space."

Me: "Hmm..." 

Man at bus stop: "Religion was created by a highly advanced alien civilization. Very smart, a very smart race. Smarter than us. Way, way smarter. They were advanced enough to know that other advanced, sentient civilizations could pose a threat, eventually. So, they did what any rational civilization would do. They invented a virus that would infect the forebrain of intelligent life forms. You got a smoke?"

Me: "Sorry, no."

Man at bus stop: "Why you ask, did they do this? They did it to slow us down. What impedes progress more than religion? Few things. It's a hindrance to scientific progress, social progress, sexual progress, even moral progress. Think about it. All these people around the world killing each other in the name of religion. Been like that for a long time. Foolish, isn't it?"

Me: "Yeah, it is."

Man at bus stop: "The next obvious question is, how did they get the virus here? The universe is a big place. You can't just zip around in flying saucers like on TV. No, that's nuts. It's a waste of gas. You wouldn't have the resources to pull that off. Most civilizations don't. No sir. They did it the only way any rational civilization would do it. They built an army of solar-powered self-replicating robots to spread the virus. The robot lands on a comet, an asteroid, a meteorite. You know, they just settle in on that thing for little while, dig a hole, plant the virus. Their work is done and they move on to the next space rock. And the virus just lies there dormant. Just sits around biding its time. Playing virus solitaire. Doing push ups, you know. That's how it's devised. It just sits there waiting and waiting. It's hearty too. They build 'em hearty. Got to build 'em hearty because you got to be tough enough to tolerate the extreme temperatures of space, solar winds, radiation. All that hostile space stuff."

Me: "Wow."

Man at bus stop: "One of those little meteors eventually makes it's way to the Milky Way, sails right through the Kuiper belt, penetrates the Earth's atmosphere. Boom. Bang. Boom. You've got yourself the Chickxulub crater right off the Yucatan Peninsula. You know the rest of the story. The dinosaurs die off. Some little marmot-type critter survives, one thing leads to another, and you end up with monkeys who think they're too good to be monkeys. And, of course, you've got alien viruses lying dormant, just waiting to infect some poor mammal's brain. This is what theopanspermia is all about. It's in all mammals probably but only manifests itself in species with more advanced cognition. I'm thinking the virus uses some form of bacteria as a delivery mechanism. That would make the most sense. Oxygen, I gather, is the catalyst that brings the bacteria to life, which spreads all over the place willy-nilly. You know, that stuff's everywhere. Spores. In the gut. In the water, on land, in the sky. It's everywhere. Stuff's everywhere. It's a Trojan horse for the virus. If we ever find a cure for religion and get rid of it, like Lenon said, we'll probably start programming the viruses ourselves. You got the time?"

Root: theism + panspermia

#30 Amomiorate

To make better by invoking the assistance of one's mommy.

Looking at the big red "C" on the top of her trigonometry mid-term exam sent a tremor of terror down Elizabeth's spine. Her heart began to race. Her eyes began to tear up. Her anguish, however, quickly metamorphosed into moral outrage. It was besides the point that she had not studied for several weeks. She would not stand for this indignity, for this affront on her GPA, this existential threat to her college admission plans. She knew she had to act quickly to amomiorate the situation.  

Root = ameliorate + mommy

#29 Sleight of wad

A technique used to make a tip appear greater than it actually is.

The tightwad didn’t want the waitress, or other customers, to think he was a tightwad, at least not while he hung around to get his bottomless cup’s worth of coffee. So, he did what any tightwad would do. Through sleight of wad he folded three singles so artfully they appeared to be nine.