2011-07-03
Original: 2011-07-03 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (narration, woman with short brown hair at a computer): To punish my high schoolers for overusing their thesaurus, I set up a fake website.
Panel 2 (narration): I looked like a thesaurus, but was nothing but fancy-sounding fake words.
On-screen text:
Conversation:
synonyms - speechifying, mutudialogism, semicommunicateness
antonyms - inverbloquaciation, subnusaurus, quieticrenness
Conversion:
synonyms - revelutication, modificon, morphatorium
antonyms - samenlarum, tomanstaunch, stickitothemwens
Narration: Close enough! They were all indulging in needless thesaurus abuse.
Panel 3 (narration over an image of Ophelia from Hamlet): And Ophelia Houghen, was feigning insanitation, which subsequently morphatoriated into actual insanitation. Subsequently, Hamlet, having pretensized his insanitation went insanitial, as he reactified to such a paintastic atuality.
Narration: And subsequently I gradually morphatoriumed.
Panel 4 (narration; a man and a woman talking): I tried to tell Marla it was a prank, but by the time I did so they were so used to the fake words, I couldn't communicate!
Man: It became fake!
Woman: Surely regards her... 'speechifying'... is an incaraginous act to that toponicity.
Panel 5 (narration; a woman in a graduation cap and a man): Soon, the entire student body was linguistically infected!
Woman (in cap): Wouldest you accommodate me at from in our half-fortunood?
Man: Wouldest be wondercilable to me?
Panel 6 (narration over an image of a person at a desk): I kept quiet and hoped for the best in some ways, the enaroland english was beautiful.
Narration: As the colored gentleties in the west, my variated language demonstrated, you, who had defenestred groanlimps my speechifications.
Panel 7 (narration; the brown-haired woman): Then I remembered they were all writing essays for college admission.
Woman: What 'speechified' Harvard?
Narration / caption: They 'anti-vessed' my application!
Votey: A blonde woman looks unimpressed and says, 'Thesaurus jokes? This is a new low.' A bearded man at a desk replies, '*Achem* a new NADIR.'
Panel 2 (narration): I looked like a thesaurus, but was nothing but fancy-sounding fake words.
On-screen text:
Conversation:
synonyms - speechifying, mutudialogism, semicommunicateness
antonyms - inverbloquaciation, subnusaurus, quieticrenness
Conversion:
synonyms - revelutication, modificon, morphatorium
antonyms - samenlarum, tomanstaunch, stickitothemwens
Narration: Close enough! They were all indulging in needless thesaurus abuse.
Panel 3 (narration over an image of Ophelia from Hamlet): And Ophelia Houghen, was feigning insanitation, which subsequently morphatoriated into actual insanitation. Subsequently, Hamlet, having pretensized his insanitation went insanitial, as he reactified to such a paintastic atuality.
Narration: And subsequently I gradually morphatoriumed.
Panel 4 (narration; a man and a woman talking): I tried to tell Marla it was a prank, but by the time I did so they were so used to the fake words, I couldn't communicate!
Man: It became fake!
Woman: Surely regards her... 'speechifying'... is an incaraginous act to that toponicity.
Panel 5 (narration; a woman in a graduation cap and a man): Soon, the entire student body was linguistically infected!
Woman (in cap): Wouldest you accommodate me at from in our half-fortunood?
Man: Wouldest be wondercilable to me?
Panel 6 (narration over an image of a person at a desk): I kept quiet and hoped for the best in some ways, the enaroland english was beautiful.
Narration: As the colored gentleties in the west, my variated language demonstrated, you, who had defenestred groanlimps my speechifications.
Panel 7 (narration; the brown-haired woman): Then I remembered they were all writing essays for college admission.
Woman: What 'speechified' Harvard?
Narration / caption: They 'anti-vessed' my application!
Votey: A blonde woman looks unimpressed and says, 'Thesaurus jokes? This is a new low.' A bearded man at a desk replies, '*Achem* a new NADIR.'
Alt text
A tall multi-panel SMBC comic. A woman with short brown hair narrates that to punish her high schoolers for overusing their thesaurus, she set up a fake website that looked like a thesaurus but contained only fancy-sounding made-up words (shown as on-screen lists of nonsense 'synonyms' and 'antonyms' like 'speechifying,' 'morphatorium,' and 'stickitothemwens'). She says the students were all indulging in needless thesaurus abuse. Over a classical image of Ophelia from Hamlet, the narration spirals into ever-denser fake vocabulary, claiming Ophelia 'feigned insanitation' and Hamlet 'went insanitial,' and that the narrator herself gradually 'morphatoriumed.' In later panels, characters speak entirely in the invented gibberish ('Wouldest you accommodate me at from in our half-fortunood?'), and the narrator admits that by the time she tried to confess it was a prank, everyone was so used to the fake words that real communication broke down and the whole student body was 'linguistically infected.' In the final panel the woman realizes too late that the students used the fake words on their college admission essays, asking what 'speechified' Harvard, with the punchline that they 'anti-vessed' (rejected) their applications. Votey: a small black-and-white scene where a blonde woman flatly says 'Thesaurus jokes? This is a new low,' and a bearded man at a desk corrects her, '*Achem* a new NADIR,' using a fancier synonym for 'low' to one-up the joke.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.