Quack
1. The sound of a duck call. 2. What an unsound doctor is called as he ducks out of town. |
Quagmire
Any situation more easily entered into than exited from; e.g., a guerrilla war, a bad marriage or a conversation with an insurance salesman. |
Quality of Life
What an industrialized nation is said to offer when enough of its citizens are suffering from terminal stress. |
Quiche
A rich and highly calorific egg pie, once consumed almost exclusively by the French peasantry, then discovered by gourmets, who introduced it to the upwardly mobile crowd and thus procured for it a fatal popularity. Now a staple at company cafeterias and roadside pubs, where it is rapidly descending in status towards its primeval roots. |
Quota
The colour-by-numbers approach to resolving social inequities. |
Quotation
A line borrowed from some immortal work of the dominant culture, generally in an effort to impress one's peers. Examples: 'I think, therefore I am.' Descartes 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' Dickens "There's a sucker born every minute.' Phineas Taylor Bamum |
Quotation Marks
Two pairs of curved fingers framing a word or phrase to give it a cruelly ironic twist (the "intellectual talk" show host) or used on signs by semiliterates to provide needed emphasis (On Sale Here- Fresh "Eggs"). |
