Dennis O'Toole
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JACK Your Vocab 

11/20/2014

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PictureThis is your brain on wordpower.
[The other day I promised a second article that addresses Men's Health issues (oops, I keep capitalizing that phrase for some reason). Here it is. The first one is here.]

Professional blasters, be they powerlifters, weightlifters, or strongmen, have a common saying: “Don’t talk about it: BLAST about it.” That’s good as far as the gym door, but when we find ourselves among weaklings who wouldn’t know a chest fly from a pistol squat, it helps to have a vocab as jacked as your delts.

And so, I have compiled a list of three bad-ass power words to impress in the boardroom… and the bedroom. Or wherever you choose to have intramarital sex.


1. FLANGE

You know those edgy rim thingies on the circumferences (i.e., the outer part of circles) of your 50 kg plates? Those are flanges. First known use was way back in 1735, sayeth Merriam-Webster. Further, the dictionary folk speculate that it it’s “perhaps an alteration of flanch, a curving charge on a heraldic shield.” Makes sense.

USE IT IN A SENTENCE:

“This 100 lb. Troy Barbell Wide Flanged Olympic plate cost me $199.00 at AmericanFitness.net, not that this is an ad.”

Synonyms: None.
Antonyms: Center part where the barbell goes.

2. TRAPEZIAN
 
The other day I had four-and-a-half hundo on the bar and was shruggin’ away like it was my job. As a full-time barbell reviewer, it often is. But this was a pro-bono blast, and the bono-ficiary was yours truly. I felt the burn in my traps that longtime blastmen know as The God Kiss. I closed my eyes to shut it all out. Even the feel of my RDX Membrane Pro Weight Lifting Gloves seemed to disappear… And that’s when it occurred to me. “Trap” is likely short for something.

I dropped my Hampton Urethane Fixed Curl Barbell to the floor (a steal at $2,550 for a sack of ten) and ran to my dictionary. I turned the pages so fast, I ripped a quarter of them out of the binding with my massive fingers. Sure enough, “trap” is short for “trapezius,” and named after the trapezium--which between me, you, and the wall here, is a quadrilateral with no parallel sides. Trapezian, then, would be a rad adjectival form for the muscle or the quadrilateral.

USE IT IN A SENTENCE:

“Trapezian is my favorite speed metal band. They are from Brazil.”

Synonyms: None.
Antonyms: Pectoral.

3. KINETIC

The Greeks were smart as hell. They invented math AND school. So it helps to pepper your lingo with Greek words in the same way that a little feta cheese makes any salad “Mediterranean.” WINK.

But seriously. Let’s bring it down. Seriously: every blaster and his mother can tell you (especially if she’s a blaster too) that we get jacked so we can store elastic potential energy into our muscles. That’s all the size of your ‘ceps and quad’s mean: that you are a fearsome beastman with loads of stored energy just a-waitin to get kinetic on some fool. Muscles aren’t only for show… they’re also for go. And that’s where kinesis comes in.

Kinetic energy is the energy and object possesses when in motion. Or something close to that. I am a blaster, not a scientist. But I can tell you that kinetic comes from the Greek word meaning “Move” because I looked it up online.

USE IT IN A SENTENCE:

“If I don’t get extra pepperoni on this here personal pan, I am liable to go kinetic on a sucka.”
 
Synonym: Active, blastful.
Antonym: Preblastic.


So that’s it: grab any of these words by the flange and unleash it’s kineticpower. Those three words are guaranteed knock socks… and the skirt*… off of anyone! Trapezian.

*The skirt, that is, of a partner with whom you have celebrated a religious or state-sanctioned marriage.

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    About Dennis

    Dennis O'Toole is an all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime.  He lives in Chicago. 

    If you need to reach me, dial:
    denotoole AT SYMBOL gmail DOT co LETTER M.  

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