Word of the week brings you up close and personal with the noble tongue of English. This tongue will be wiggled in places where only the brave dare venture. Thespian :: thes⋅pi⋅an :: /ˈθɛspiən/ -noun 1. someone who is sexually attracted to people who lisp: they opened up a new gay and thespian bar in the corner of Fifth and Merrywether's. 2. the second most probable culprit in a murder investigation (after the butler, of course): "It was the thespian! The thespian did it!" cried the distraught nanny, and the detective believed him. -pronoun 3. (dialectal) the gender-neutral pronoun in English: "Oh my, what a lovely child you have. How old is she?" "It's not a she, it's a thespian. We're just not sure of the sex yet." -adjective 4. hideously ugly or deformed (think Ron Howard): even an exorcism by the pope himself did nothing for little Timmy's thespian face. 5. (theatre, film) containing nude shots of people who should never shed their clothes in public: when I watched her thespian performance, I was violently reminded of how gravity and old age don't go well together.

Origin: 1425–75; late ME thelespian a vile-smelling mixture of pus and goat milk (n.), jebodian (adj.) < MF hun-hun the grainy, coarse texture of crotch rash, deriv. of putteres to make love in an outhouse < L antedeutonum the probability of finding a microchip in Ancient Rome, first calculated by the noted Greek astronomer, Mucus Feces, in 200 BC. [tags]word,of,the,week,thespian[/tags]