eConsultant - Meaning of Liff

HADZOR (n.) : A sharp instrument placed in the washing-up bowl which makes it easier to cut yourself.
HAGNABY (n.) : Someone who looked a lot more attractive in the disco than they do in your bed the next morning.
HALCRO (n.) : An adhesive fibrous cloth used to hold babies' clothes together. Thousands of tiny pieces of jam 'hook' on to thousands of tiny-pieces of dribble, enabling the cloth to become 'sticky'.
HALIFAX (n.) : The green synthetic astroturf on which greengrocers display their vegetables.
HAMBLEDON (n.) : The sound of a single-engined aircraft flying by, heard whilst lying in a summer field in England, which somehow concentrates the silence and sense of space and timelessness and leaves one with a profound feeling of something or other.
HAPPLE (vb.) : To annoy people by finishing their sentences for them and then telling them what they really meant to say.
HARBLEDOWN (vb.) : To manoeuvre a double mattress down a winding staircase.
HARBOTTLE (n.) : A particular kind of fly which lives inside double glazing.
HARPENDEN (n.) : The coda to a phone conversion, consisting of about eight exchanges, by which people try gracefully to get off the line.
HASELBURY PLUCKNETT (n.) : A mechanical device for cleaning combs invented during the industrial revolution at the same time as Arkwright's Spinning Jenny, but which didn't catch on in the same way.
HASSOP (n.) : The pocket down the back of an armchair used for storing two-shilling bits and pieces of Lego.
HASTINGS (pl.n.) : Things said on the spur of the moment to explain to someone who comes into a room unexpectedly precisely what it is you are doing.
HATHERSAGE (n.) : The tiny snippets of beard which coat the inside of a washbasin after shaving in it.
HAUGHAM (n.) : One who loudly informs other diners in a restaurant what kind of man he is by calling for the chef by his christian name from the lobby.
HAXBY (n.) : Any garden implement found in a potting shed whose exact purpose is unclear.
HEATON PUNCHARDON (n.) : A violent argument which breaks out in the car on the way home from a party between a couple who have had to be polite to each other in company all evening.
HENSTRIDGE (n.) : The dried yellow substance found between the prongs of forks in restaurants.
HERSTMONCEUX (n.) : The correct name for the gold medallion worn by someone who is in the habit of wearing their shirt open to the waist.
HEVER (n.) : The panic caused by half-hearing Tannoy in an airport.
HIBBING (n.) : The marks left on the outside breast pocket of a storekeeper's overall where he has put away his pen and missed.
HICKLING (participial vb.) : The practice of infuriating theatregoers by not only arriving late to a centre-row seat, but also loudly apologising to and patting each member of the audience in turn.
HIDCOTE BARTRAM (n.) : To be caught in a hidcote bartram is to say a series of protracted and final goodbyes to a group of people, leave the house and then realise you've left your hat behind.
HIGH LIMERIGG (n.) : The topmost tread of a staircase which disappears when you've climbing the stairs in the darkness.
HIGH OFFLEY (n.) : Gossnargh (q.v.) three weeks later.
HOBBS CROSS (n.) : The awkward leaping manoeuvre a girl has to go through in bed in order to make him sleep on the wet patch.
HODDLESDEN (n.) : An 'injured' footballer's limb back into the game which draws applause but doesn't fool anybody.
HODNET (n.) : The wooden safety platform supported by scaffolding round a building under construction from which the builders (at almost no personal risk) can drop pieces of cement on passers-by.
HOFF (vb.) : To deny indignantly something which is palpably true.
HOGGESTON (n.) : The action of overshaking a pair of dice in a cup in the mistaken belief that this will affect the eventual outcome in your favour and not irritate everyone else.
HORTON-CUM-STUDLEY (n.) : The combination of little helpful grunts, nodding movements of the head, considerate smiles, upward frowns and serious pauses that a group of people join in making in trying to elicit the next pronouncement of somebody with a dreadful stutter.
HOVE (adj.) : Descriptive of the expression seen on the face of one person in the presence of another who clearly isn't going to stop talking for a very long time.
HOYLAKE (n.) : The pool of edible gravy which surrounds an inedible and disgusting lump of meat - eaten to give the impression that the person is 'just not very hungry, but mmm this is delicious'. Cf. Peaslake - a similar experience had by vegetarians.
HUBY (n.) : A half-erection large enough to be a publicly embarrassing bulge in the trousers, not large enough to be of any use to anybody.
HUCKNALL (vb.) : To crouch upwards: as in the movement of a seated person's feet and legs made in order to allow a cleaner's hoover to pass beneath them.
HULL (adj.) : Descriptive of the smell of a weekend cottage.
HUMBER (vb.) : To move like the cheeks of a very fat person as their car goes over a cattle grid.
HUMBY (n.) : An erection which won't go down when a gentleman has to go for a pee in the middle of making love to someone.
HUNA (n.) : The result of coming to the wrong decision.
HUNSINGORE (n.) : Medieval ceremonial brass horn with which the successful execution of an araglin (q.v.) is trumpeted from the castle battlements.
HUTLERBURN (n. archaic) : A burn sustained as a result of the behaviour of a clumsy hutler. (The precise duties of hutlers are now lost in the mists of history.)
HUTTOFT (n.) : The fibrous algae which grows in the dark, moist environment of trouser turn-ups.