Well, THERE'S a word that's changed meaning! But in the old meaning, I'll present here some lines from the book, "Boners," published in 1931, which is a compilation of schoolboy humor and unconscious amusement.

"Acrimony, sometimes called holy, is another name for marriage."

"The Acropolis was the she-wolf that nursed Romeo and Juliet."

"Ali Baba means being away when the crime was committed."

"Ambiguity means having two wives at the same time."

"Ambiguity means telling the truth when you don't mean to."

Stay tuned for our next thrilling episode of BONERS!

These are great! Thanks, Asa!

An antidote is a funny story that you have heard before.

An appendix is a portion of a book, which nobody yet has discovered of any use.

Explain the word, "asset."
When you are making out an account you subtract the smaller from the larger amunt. That is called assetaining the difference.

Average means something that hens lay eggs on.

A blizzard is the inside of a fowl.

A brazier is the kind of garment the Italians wore instead of having their houses heated by furnaces.

Asa,
Keep them coming.. you're our #1 Bonehead.

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Originally posted by KHC:
Asa,
Keep them coming.. you're our #1 Bonehead.

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At least you didn't say, "Bonerhead!"

A buttress is a woman who makes butter.

Celibacy is the crime a priest commits when he marries.

Celibacy was a unit of land in the Mohammedan system.

A compliment is when you say something to another which he and we know is not true.

A connoisseur is a person who stands outside a picture palace.

The Dauphin was a rare fish that used to inhabit the Arctic Circle in the middle ages.

BTW, did I mention that this book was one of the very first to be illustrated by Dr. Seuss? Indeed, it may be the only one he did which wasn't his own.

"A buttress is a woman who makes butter."

So then, a flying buttress . . . .

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Originally posted by Caterwauller:
"A buttress is a woman who makes butter."

So then, a flying buttress . . . .

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I guess I can jump ahaed in the book: Medieval cathedrals were supported by flying buttocks.

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Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
Explain the word, "asset."
When you are making out an account you subtract the smaller from the larger amunt. That is called assetaining the difference.

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I didn't know that. I thought an asset was a little donkey!

Tinman

A deacon is the lowest kind of a Christian.

Doldrums are a series of high rocks near the equator.

Double dealing is when you buy something wholesale and sell retail.

"Dour" means a sort of help, as in the hymn, "O God dour help in ages past."

An epistle is the wife of an apostle.

A euphamism is a description of a disagreeable thing by an agreeable name. Example, the child is the father of the man.

Faith is that quality which enables us to believe what we know to be untrue.

My friend overheard her ten-year-old son praying.

" ..... give us this day our jelly bread .... "

and, at the end of the prayer, "Hey, Man!!"

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Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
A deacon is the lowest kind of a Christian.

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I didn't know Bush was a deacon.

Tinman

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I didn't know Bush was a deacon.

Tinman

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From Greek dia konos through the dirt

A fugue is what you get in a room full of people when all the windows and doors are shut.

Genius is an infinite capacity for picking brains.

To germinate is to become a naturalized German.

A goblet is a male turkey.

A grass widow is the wife of a vegetarian.

Gravity is what you get when you eat too much and too fast.

A gherkin is a native who runs after people with a knife.

An heir is when somebody dies you get what is left.

What is an herbaceous border?
One who boards all week and goes home on the weekends.

An invoice is another name for the conscience.

Isinglass is a whitish substance made form the bladders of surgeons.

Matrimony is a place where souls sufer for a time on account of their sins.

A Mayor is a he horse.

The letters, M.D. signify "mentally deficient."

A miracle is something that someone does that cannot be done.

A momentum is what you give a person when they are going away. (Note: "They" used instead of "he" in 1931! I'm surprised!!!)

A monologue is a conversation between two people, such as husband and wife.

Moussolini is a sort of material used for ladies' stockings.

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(Note: "They" used instead of "he" in 1931! I'm surprised!!!)

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Why? The construction has been in use since Chaucer's time at least.

An oboe is an American tramp.

An optomist is a man who looks after your eyes, a pessimist looks after your feet.

Oracles was the greatest orator of his day. Orator was named after Oracles because he was the first orator.

The oracle told Laius that if he had a son it would kill him.

A protoplasm is a person who is always prophesying.

The Papal Bull was really a cow that was kept at the Vatican to supply milk for the Pope's children.

Paraffin is the next order of angels after seraphim.

A period is a dot at the end of a sentence. Period costumes are dresses all covered with dots.

A polygon is a man who has many wives.

A polygon is a dead parrot.

Posters are sheets of paper pasted on blackguards.

A prism is a kind of dried plum, because people say, "prunes and prisms."

A prodigal is the son of a priest.

A Protestant is a woman who gets her living through an immortal life.

What are rabies, and what would you do for them?
Rabies are Jewish priests. I should do nothing for them.

A refugee keeps order at a football match.

Revolution is a form of government abroad.

Scent is the sound made by hounds.

A Senator is half horse and half man.

A sinecure is a disease without a cure.

A skeleton is a man with his inside out and his outside off.

S.O.S. is a musical term meaning same only softer.

A Soviet is a cloth used by waiters in hotels.

Is anybody reading these? Am I boring y'all?

I'm reading them.. I'm laughing.. I'm not bored.
But perhaps I am easily amused.

Asa asks .... "Is anybody reading these?"

.... And the multitude answers, "YES !"

Asa also asks ... "Am I boring y'all?"

.... And one shy member of the multitude rises and says, "Speaking only for myself, I'd say no, which is the same answer I'd give if I were a spokesman for the multitude."

So there you have it. Yes and no.

I liked the fact that you used y'all....

Do they use that word in the NW?

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Originally posted by KHC:
I liked the fact that you used _y'all_....

Do they use that word in the NW?

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Nope, but I'm from South Carolina! I just live in Oregon now.

I'll keep on posting them until I run through the book. And hre are a few more:

The Sphinx are some people that live in the Phillipine Islands.

A spinster is a bachelor's wife.

The Stoics were the disciples of Zero, and believed in nothing.

Transparent means something you can see through, for instance a keyhole.

A vacuum is an empty space where the Pope lives.

I'm enjoying these a great deal, Asa! Thanks!

Sir Toby was Olivia's uncle, but otherwise he was not related to her.

Milton's poetry is full of Biblical illusions.

Tennyson wrote a poem called, "Grave's Energy."

Epics describe the deeds of brave men called epicures.

Write a sentence showing clearly the meaning of"posterity."

He had a cat, but nothing else lived on his posterity.

The man looked as if he had been reduced to posterity.

Henry pade the fare because of his posterity.

By his clothes he seemed a man of great posterity.

The cat leaped about and then sat on its posterity.

Cassius was a vile man who was always doing his best to make his own ends meet.

Lord Macauly suffered from gout and wrote all his poems in iambic feet.

...and six dollars short

The letters, M.D. signify "mentally deficient."

Funny, someone told me 40 years ago she had decided M.D. stood for "miserable driver"...

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Funny, someone told me 40 years ago she had decided M.D. stood for "miserable driver"...

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Uhhh, in MY social circles, it's Mogen David! However, if you show up with it on your breath, they don't let you into the rescue mission for lunch.

What do you know about King Arthur?
King Atrhur collected all the fine brave good-loooking young men of his time and called them the Knuts of the Round Table.

Shakespeare lived at Windsor with his Merry Wives.

In conclusion, we may say that Shylock was greedy, malicious, and indeed, entirely viscous.

Homer was not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name.

Shakespeare wrote tragedies, comedies, and errors.

Polonius was a mythical sausage.

An epitaph is a short sarcastic poem.

Tennyson wrote a most beautiful poem called, "In Memorandum."

Who sang, "Come unto these yellow sands?
These are sounds made in the air by Aerial.

Bassiano sang a beautiful song called, "Tell me, where is fancy bread?

King Arthur was a person who was washed up when he was a baby, and Merlin said it should be so and they proved it.

Poetry is a thing you make prose of.

Shakespeare wrote the Merry Widow.

Samuel Jounson was known as the Doctor of Divinity because he wrote the first dictionary.

Homer wrote the Oddity.

Most of Shakespeares plays were terrible tragedies.

Pope wrote mostly in heroic cutlets.

Describe the figure of speech or artifice of style used in the following: "The child is father to the man."
Answer: "This was written by Shakespeare. He often made this kind of mistake."

"The Complete Angler" is another name for Euclid because he wrote all about angles.

Wells' history is a veritible millstone on the road to learning.

Milton wrote "Paradise Lost," then his wife died and he wrote "Paradise Regained."

Keats was a poet who wrote on a greasy urn.

Robert Burns had one son who was called Wha Hae.

Poetry is when every line begins with a capital letter.

Prospero is the clown in "The Vicar of Wakefield" by Dickens.

Virgil was the mother of Christ.

A morality play is a play in which the characters are goblins, ghosts, virgins, and other supernatural creatures.

I found the book! My copy is called _Herrings go about the sea in shawls: and other classic howlers from classrooms and examination papers_. It is, indeed, illustrated by Seuss.

So, CW, how about adding to the list?

When I saw the title "BONERS" on this thread I thought maybe we were coming up with the masculine equivalent of the camel toe. But no. That's an entirely different kind of boner.

Sure, I'll add to it, Asa. The book is at work - so I'll do it tomorrow.

Pardon me if there are repeats. I think my version is in different order . . . OR . . .Asa went through randomly.

Name six animals from the Arctic regions: "Three bears and three seals."

How will the Panama Canal aid in the defense of the country in time of war? "The locks will keep out the enemy's ships."


Australia sends to England wine made from a bird called the Emu.

Climate lasts all the time, but weather only a few days.

Latitude tells you how hot you are, and longitude how cold you are.

The Menai Straists are crossed by a tubercular bridge.

The suns sets in the west and hurries round to the east to be in time to rise the next morning.

The Eskimos are God's frozen people.

Sienna is famous for being burnt.


The trade of Spain is small, oweing to the insolence of the people.

The people in Iceland are Equinoxes.

Geometry teaches us to bisex angels.

Algebraical symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.

The logarithm of a given nubmer is the number of times the given nubmer must be squared in order that the given number may be equal to this number.

Isosceles triangles are used on maps to join places with the same weather.

A circle is a line which meets its other end without ending.

A polygon with seven sides is called a hooligan. (why does this make me think of Asa?)

Ceasar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul.

The Augustan era was a mistake of Augustus.

Atilla was the wife Justinian, and was a great halp to him.

Pepsin was king of the Franks.

In the Middle Ages the Pope had very great sexual powers. (Hey, I'm not writing these, just typing them up.)

It's bee a while, but here are a few more:

The government of Athens was a democracy. In Sparta it was an allegory.

The Persians outnumbered the Greeks because they had more men.

What was the Age of Pericles?
I'm not sure, but I recon he was about forty.

Rome was overthrown by invasions by the Huns, Visigoths, and Osteopaths.

The cause of the Great Schism was that the Pope had his head in Rome and his seat in Avignon.

The Pope declared Luther's writings to be hereditary.

The result of the Reformation was that people could choose to be either Catholics or Pugilists.

Mexico was conquered by Kotex.

The Britons had the strange and terrible religion called the religion of the Dudes.