MARKET DEEPING (participial vb.)
Stealing one piece of fruit from a street fruit-and- vegetable stall.
MARLOW (n.)
The bottom drawer in the kitchen your mother keeps her paper bags in.
MARYTAVY (n.)
A person to whom, under dire injunctions of silence, you tell a secret which you wish to be fare more widely known.
MASSACHUSETTS (pl.n.)
Those items and particles which people who, after blowing their noses, are searching for when they look into their hankies.
MATCHING GREEN (adj.)
(Of neckties.) Any colour which Nigel Rees rejects as unsuitable for his trousers or jacket.
MAVIS ENDERBY (n.)
The almost-completely-forgotten girlfriend from your distant past for whom your wife has a completely irrational jealousy and hatred.
MEATH (adj.)
Warm and very slightly clammy. Descriptive of the texture of your hands after the automatic drying machine has turned itself off, just damp enough to make it embarrassing if you have to shake hands with someone immediately afterwards.
MEATHOP (n.)
One who sets off for the scene of an aircraft crash with a picnic hamper.
MEETH (n.)
Something which American doctors will shortly tell us we are all suffering from.
MELCOMBE REGIS (n.)
The name of the style of decoration used in cocktail lounges in mock Tudor hotels in Surrey.
MELLON UDRIGLE (n.)
The ghastly sound made by traditional folksingers.
MELTON CONSTABLE (n.)
A patent anti-wrinkle cream which policemen wear to keep themselves looking young.
MEMPHIS (n.)
The little bits of yellow fluff which get trapped in the hinge of the windscreen wipers after polishing the car with a new duster.
MILWAUKEE (n.)
The melodious whistling, chanting and humming tone of the milwaukee can be heard whenever a public lavatory is entered. It is the way the occupants of the cubicles have of telling you there’s no lock on their door and you can’t come in.
MINCHINHAMPTON (n.)
The expression on a man’s face when he has just zipped up his trousers without due care and attention.
MOFFAT (n. tailoring term)
That part of your coat which is designed to be sat on by the person next of you on the bus.
MOLESBY (n.)
The kind of family that drives to the seaside and then sits in the car with all the windows closed, reading the Sunday Express and wearing sidcups (q.v.)
MONKS TOFT (n.)
The bundle of hair which is left after a monk has been tonsured, which he keeps tired up with a rubber band and uses for chasing ants away.
MOTSPUR (n.)
The fourth wheel of a supermarket trolley which looks identical to the other tree but renders the trolley completely uncontrollable.
MO I RANA Imagine being on a vacation, and it’s raining all the time, you are driving and the kids are making you a nervous wreck. Well you are definitive in Mo i Rana.
MUGEARY (n. medical)
The substance from which the unpleasant little yellow globules in the corners of a sleepy person’s eyes are made.
MUNDERFIELD (n.) A meadow selected, whilst driving past, as being ideal for a picnic which, from a sitting position, turns out to be full of stubble, dust and cowpats, and almost impossible to enjoy yourself in.
NAAS (n.)
The winemaking region of Albania where most of the wine that people take to bottle-parties comes from.
NACTION (n.)
The ‘n’ with which cheap advertising copywriters replace the word ‘and’ (as in ‘fish ‘n’ chips’, ‘mix ‘n’ match’, ‘assault ‘n’ battery’), in the mistaken belief that this is in some way chummy or endearing.
NAD (n.)
Measure defined as the distance between a driver’s outstretched fingertips and the ticket machine in an automatic car-park. 1 nad = 18.4 cm.
NANHORON (n. medical)
A tiny valve concealed in the inner ear which enables a deaf grandmother to converse quite normally when she feels like it, but which excludes completely anything that sounds like a request to help with laying the table.
NANTWICH (n.)
A late-night snack, invented by the Earl of Nantwich, which consists of the dampest thing in the fridge, pressed between two of the driest things in the fridge. The Earl, who lived in a flat in Clapham, invented the nantwich to avoid having to go shopping.
NAPLES (pl.n.)
The tiny depression in a piece of Ryvita.