Terms of Endearment : Defining <i> Marriage</i> as “Sealed” Proves Kids Still Say the Darnedest Things

JOAN MATURKO has coaxed another batch of definitions from her kindergarten class in the Jefferson School in Redondo Beach, with the usual provocative results.

Her new class, she thinks, is closer to the mark, possibly because of sophistication acquired as result of the recent presidential campaign.

She singles out some definitions of debate : “When a bunch of people get together.” “When you’re going fishing.”

“When you’re going fishing” no doubt makes debate a malapropism for “the bait.” Nevertheless, some of the campaign debates sounded like fishing expeditions.

I thought detective was pretty good: “Somebody goes around looking for clues with a magnifying glass.”

At least it shows that the kindergartner knew the words clue and magnifying glass, which is a good start.

The definition for attack was full-blown: “You’re having a war and somebody says attack and everyone comes running into each other.”

My favorite this year is the definition of critic : “A frog putting its legs together and it sounds like a violin.”

It’s possible that the pupil was thinking of cricket, but I choose to think that he was trying to illustrate the sound that a critic makes.

Coincidentally, I have also acquired a copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary of Quotable Definitions, and I find these definitions of critic in it:

“Venomous serpents that delight in hissing.”--W. B. Daniel. “An insect.”--Samuel Johnson. “He who is forced to be literate about the illiterate, witty about the witless and coherent about the incoherent.”--John Crosby.

It seems to me that the kindergartner’s definition was metaphorical, perceptive and witty.

Mrs. Maturko has selected three definitions of marriage : “A couple of people get married.” “Two grown-ups get together.” “When you get sealed.”

“When you get sealed” is especially abrupt, graphic and indisputable. “Sealed” may even be a new synonym for this popular step.

The New World, on the other hand, lists “A lottery.”--Ben Jonson. “The most expensive way to get your laundry done”--Charles Jones. “A process that makes for strange bedfellows”--Groucho Marx.

Two of the kindergartner’s definition of history are accurate if simplistic. “Something that you find in an encyclopedia.” “Something that goes on and on and on.” Thomas Carlyle said pretty much the same thing, though with a great deal more turgidity: “A mighty drama, enacted upon the theater of time, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.” In other words, something that goes on and on and on.

One kindergartner’s definition of faint is as graphic as any I can imagine: “When your eyeballs roll up in your head and you fall over.”

The New World does not list faint, but the New World Dictionary defines it poorly, using the word faint --a no-no in definitions: “to fall into a faint, swoon, often with away. “ There’s no contest between that failure and “when your eyeballs roll up in your head and you fall over.” That’s a faint.

A kindergartner’s definition of bachelor catches very neatly the aura of machismo in that word: “It means the men who arm-wrestle.”

One of the definitions of normal is provocative: “When someone’s the same as someone else.” That seems to catch a meaning that is in disfavor in today’s society. We may no longer think that to be different from someone else (namely us ) is abnormal.

The New World is silent on normal , but it comes close to the subject in defining nonconformist : “One whom the world hates.”--St. Jerome. “Merely a person of conformity in reverse.”--Anonymous.

Of course, the kindergartners tend to define abstract words in terms of concrete words that sound the same: Adore is defined as “It’s a thing that you open and shut when you go in your house.” Thus are malapropisms made.

One defined extinct as “when your house smells bad,” but another came close when he defined it as “when the dinosaurs are no more.”

And this one is a classic: zucchini --”a bathing suit.”

Do I sound like a violin?