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Concert
On-stage talent playing to a chorus of coughs. |
Condom
An object similar in appearance to a balloon, although it is rarely inflated with helium or tied into funny animals shapes at children's birthday patties. |
Condominium
In the U.S., a private residential unit that recreates the ambience of suburban housing without the nuisance of private lawns and gardens; a domicile favoured especially by young professionals and retired folks, who apparently don't mind paying substantial monthly fees on property they already own. |
Conformity
Fear of being publicly identified as an individual, different from and therefore inferior to the norm; accounts for the open-fronted uniform worn virtually unchanged by corporate males for half a century. |
Connoisseur
One who attains an obsessive knowledge of wines, audio equipment, cats or French cheeses so as to confer a sense of inadequacy on those who would simply enjoy them. |
Consciousness-raising
The fine art of teaching well-adjusted citizens to view themselves as victims of oppression. |
Conservation
The subversive notion that a tract of unspoilt rain forest, for example, might be more valuable than the fast-food hamburgers that can be produced on its ruins. |
Conservative
A decent fellow who counsels the poor to earn pennies for their daily bread, while he and his family dine nightly on filet mignon. In the former Soviet Union, a Communist. |
Conspicuous Consumption
The tendency of the newly rich to convert income into material trappings of a vulgar and ostentatious nature, thereby earning the scorn of their betters, the envy of their peers and the wrath of the less fortunate. |
Conspiracy
An intricate plot that, when described by its victim, generally results in confinement to a padded cell, but when fabricated by authors or film directors, usually earns them a new hacienda in the hills. |
