Uh-oh, it's . . .

The Boston Market Story

Dictionary recalled due to hyphen-spill

This story is embargoed until Meriweather Lewis stops bragging about he saved the future of the currency by performing the Heimlich maneuver on Sacagawea.

©2001 The Numismatological York Times

   HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Macmillan USA on Saturday recalled 438,000 copies of the fourth edition of its popular Webster's New-World College Dictionary after it was learned that a disgruntled numismatologist, upset that a color illustration would show Sacagawea wearing a Jennifer Lopez dress, tossed a bucket of hyphens into the presses.

   As a result, numerous words that the dictionary's editors intended to have appear as one word came out hyphenated, wreaking havoc in news-rooms across the nation. In a related development, an award-winning headline writer was injured by a flying dictionary thrown off a highway overpass by a disgruntled linguist, who was upset because spaghetti was defined more narrowly than linguini.

   The linguist, Edwin P. Reiter, was charged with assaulting the English language, and is being held in the Bergen-County Jail.

   Reiter faces additional charges of scamming several inmates and guards at the county jail by convincing them to invest in the Boston Market Coupon Clippers team in the Rotisserie Chicken League. Authorities said there is no such team, no such league, no such number and no such zone. Reiter was released after mortgaging the USS Linguini, a submarine that distinguished itself in the Italian Navy during World War II by torpedoing several German warships that had slipped into the Hackensack River disguised as tourist dinghies.

   Among the recalled dictionary's more controversial entries were:

Online: (n.) Place where numismatologists' wives have to hang the laundry because the dryer doesn't take Sacagawea dollars.

Curriculum-curricula: (n.) Famous Italian song, often performed by the Three Tenors during their early night-club days.

Webster: (n.) Person who surfs the Internet while updating dictionaries with confusing new entries.

Turkey medallion: (n.) Early design for the new dollar coin, celebrating the landing of the Pilgrims in Boston Harbor. Lost out to Sacagawea when the secretary of the Treasury saw the Jennifer Lopez dress she was wearing, and pointed out that the Pilgrims didn't land in Boston Harbor anyway. Also: Medal given to the pilgrims for landing in Boston Harbor.

Thpatch: (n.) Story on front page of a newspaper, artfully decorated with lots of thpictures.

Underway: (adj.) Delivery of pizza to newspapers on every election night except primary election night. "Where is the pizza already? The pizza is underway."

Floppy disk: (n.) Little square thing that relies on memory.

Floppy editor: (n.) Little round person who relies on a style book.

AP- ES-03-04 1725EST