We here at Any Four Words firmly believe that words do not mean what you think they mean, but instead mean what we say they mean. It is in your best interest, then, that we tell you the meanings of your words. If you have any disagreements, additions, or detractions, feel free to Contact Us.
act
(verb)
To pretend to be something you’re not, or maybe something you almost are.
Sometimes you do it for the sake of amusement, sometimes for comfort,
sometimes for survival. There are always certain rules people use when it
comes to acting, and oftentimes people give the greatest credit to those
actors who can miraculously become their own complete opposites. Our most
admired politicians are our greatest bullshitters, and we are always surprised
to discover that our favorite drunks of film and televeision were, in real life,
timid teetotalers or, what’s worse, thoroughly average men.
We here at Any Four Words believe
in one rule when it comes to acting. Good acting is not being sober and acting
drunk, but instead being drunk and acting sober.
age
(verb)
To refuse to die.
American
(noun)
The loudest asshole in a given room.
anonymity
(noun)
The first refuge of cowards.
anyfourwords.com
(noun)
A depressingly American endeavor.
award
(verb)
To pat yourself on the back by giving a blunt knickknack to a person in whom
you somehow see the most notable parts of yourself.
beat
(state of being, verb)
Herbert Huncke used this word to describe how he was feeling when he fell
nto a booth at some cafe/diner in New York. Kerouac took it from him and used
it to describe himself and his peers. He linked it with the Beatitudes.
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.(Verse 3)
Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land. (Verse 4)
Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted. (Verse 5)
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. (Verse 6)
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. (Verse 7)
Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. (Verse 8)
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Verse 9)
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Verse 10)
It was taken from Kerouac (first by John Clellon Holmes in his novel “go”)
and then by the media to describe a “movement”, a “generation” where people
grew goatees, smoked “tea” and recited poetry over fucking conga drums.
My definition of beat is:
a) To be Holy, Holy, Holy.
b) To be Catholic, drunk, and queer.
As a verb, it comes in handy when one wants to act upon his meat, that is,
to beat meat. It is also commonly used in phrases such as, “I’ll beat the shit
out of you.”
beauty
(noun)
The quality of having lots of money. Or will. Or tits. Billions of tits.
bickering
(noun)
The one true sign of a working relationship.
birth control
(noun)
A highly potent aphrodisiac that too many people never seem to have heard of.
blue
(adjective)
The default color for a blank projection when the firmware is broken. And the
IT guy can’t save you. He’s nowhere to be found. His wife just left him for
another man. And the computer isn’t even on. Why should it be? The presenter
found out his uncle’s dead and has spent the last hour pacing and talking to
himself about mortality. Nothing’s going right today, but on the plus side,
the crowd doesn’t seem to mind. They spend their time looking into the screen,
enjoying it, biding the time between when they get to go home and when they have
to go back where they came from.
bossy
(adjective)
Enjoying command, wanting to be in charge, always telling other people what
to do. I 'm always on the target end of bossy people. They’re constantly
giving me advice and telling me to do things for my own good. Here are
some of the things they tell me:
Why do you bring a vodka bottle everytime you come to see me?
For the love of God, have the decency to put on some pants once in awhile.
Stop throwing yourself into traffic all the time.
Put that razor down!
Wash your hands before you do that with the dog.
Stop calling me a retard.
We already know what you think about Jesus.
If you’d stop slashing their tires, the police would stop arresting you.
Tell me you love me.
Don’t tell me you love me if you don’t mean it.
Don’t go.
Don’t stay.
Be your own person.
It’s the same damn thing every time. What makes it worse is I think
I’m starting to like it.
compromise
(verb)
To painstakingly negotiate until everyone is equally unhappy. Because
it’s better to be unhappy than half-submerged in puddles of everyone’s
blood.
control
(verb)
To convince people they’re enjoying themselves when in fact they’re doing
exactly what you want them to do. If you’ve ever enjoyed or thought of
enjoying the wide streets of Paris, you are being used. In the few decades
leading up to 1848, Paris suffered from constant revolution, and whenever
the peasants needed to gain some leverage against the army, they barricaded
the dark, narrow, medieval streets. The revolution of 1848 proved to be the
turning point, because in 1849, Napoleon III commissioned a 1/5000 scale map
of Paris and decided to replace the narrow alleyways with circular boulevards
and tree-lined thoroughfares. The streets made the city beautiful, but
skeptics will always remind you that it’s very hard to barricade a wide street.
All this beauty simply went to serve the strength and influence of the
government and its army. The beauty you are so enamored of is simply used to
keep you under control.
Of course, there’s a good chance that the above history is bunk, invented after
the fact so that anarchists and skeptics could pat themselves on the back for
being able to see through the looking glass. The streets of early 19th century
Paris were miserably small and cramped, promoting at every turn disease and
discontent. Opening them up was simply a smart move. But the idea of a riot-proof
Paris constructed by someone whose name was Napoleon is an appealing theory.
The very appeal of it puts you under the influence of any skeptic with a
plausible, unfounded idea.
Whatever the case, you are being pulled and prodded by forces you can only
vaguely imagine. The “vaguely” is what makes this true control.
converted
(adjective)
To have moved from one set of loosely held beliefs to another set of strongly
held beliefs; in short, to have become a complete asshole, flexible only with
those people whose opinions sound convertible to your own.
could
(verb)
A secondary (or perhaps tertiary) verb chiefly used to indicate wasted ability.
If someone is capable of doing something in reality, he can do it, but if
he is only capable of doing it in his or someone else’s imagination, he could
do it. He often uses could to describes things he can do but doesn’t want
to do, as in, “I could give that homeless man a dollar.” He more frequently uses
could to describe things he will not admit to being unable to do, as in,
“I could find a woman willing to marry me, if only I wanted to get married.”
However, his most common use of the word occurs in the slightly more complicated
phrase could have, which wistfully refers to those things that he might
have been capable of if only he had the patience, guts, or skill to follow them
through. Think, for instance, of, “I could have been a professional writer, but
that literary racket is a bunch of bullshit,” or, “I could have nailed that
chick, but she’s not my type,” or, “I could have made a good website, but I
prefer to keep things simple.” The most important thing to know about the word
could is that when it is used, you are listening to a statement of
tentative hope and inevitable regret.
court
(verb)
To woo a beautiful woman with gifts at her doorstep, serenades underneath
her window, and poems to her magnificence written in your blood and left
in her mailbox. It helps to carry a lance and ride a horse. This way, you’ll
be able to defend her honor at all times against suitors, family, and officers
of the law. Remember, if you let up for one hour from trotting back and forth
across her lawn, some enterprising competitor will spirit her away into the
night. Constant vigilance, young man, constant vigilance! If you maintain
your composure, within a fortnight she will collapse in tears into your arms.
And then she will be yours.
crime
(noun)
How the rich become acquainted with the poor.
crisis
(noun)
The point at which you realize you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re
doing. And you’re going to do it anyway.
dead
(adjective)
To be like John Cheever. It’s said that the man passed away on June 18, 1982,
so whatever he’s going through right now, that’s what it’s like to be dead.
dictionary
(noun)
A collection of the arbitrary meanings of those words whose existence and
definitions are accepted as a matter of common trust. I don’t like taking
them at their word.
distract
(verb)
To give someone, perhaps yourself, a purpose in life, so that this person,
perhaps yourself, will be so obsessed with his purpose he will finally leave
you the hell alone.
dream
(verb)
To let your guard down and think what you want to think. When the unicorn gores
all of your family and friends because you’re asleep and had once had a bad
experience on a carousel when you were ten, you’re dreaming. When you’re killing
time on your break and start muttering something about gas grills until a coworker
asks what the hell is the matter with you, you’re dreaming. And when you stand
outside her window, staring up and knowing who she’s with but thinking all the
same that her petty complaints about him mean that she loves you instead, you’re
dreaming, man. You’re dreaming.
duck
(verb)
To do the right thing when all that stands between the sniper and the President
is you.
famous
(adjecive)
Widely known and beloved to the point where, when you see him walking down
the street, you just want to punch that smug sonofabitch in the face. She
actually thought he was good-looking . . . but he ain’t good-looking no more.
fellatio
(noun)
Ask your mother.
feminism
(noun)
What happened when women started believing the bullshit men were telling
them to get them into bad.
fix
(verb)
To slap on some tape, tell everyone you’re as good as new, and hope to God that
nobody touches you in the spot that’ll break you all over again.
foreign
(adjective)
Other, different, slightly incomprehensible. The way the world feels when you’ve
spent the last few hours watching television.
free
(adjective)
A word people use to describe themselves.
friend
(noun)
It takes a great amount of effort to act like a human being. That’s why people
have friends. A friend is someone around whom you can talk and think like the
animal you inevitably are.
generous
(adjective)
In the middle of their third date, Tim and Sally walked down the subway
platform, where a man played drums on a bucket and asked for money. Tim
would’ve ordinarily thrown something in, a little loose change or a dollar
left over in some pocket, but here it might’ve seemed like showing off. If
he gave now, Sally could’ve gotten the impression that he was doing it just
to display how generous a person he was, when in fact she would think in her
heart that he was really just a skinflint bullshitter. The slightest
accidental gesture, a phony smile or a word of encouragement to the man
pounding furiously on his bucket, would’ve made it look like he didn’t care
at all and wasn’t worth her time. He decided to skip out on the risk and avoid
eye contact while slipping by. Already four feet past the man, he realized
that Sally was no longer with him and turned to find her digging through her
purse and placing an unspecified amount of paper money in the bucket-player’s
bin. She smiled and was about to walk by when Tim grabbed her by the arm.
“Oh, fuck no, you’re not getting away with that.” He tried to say it cheerily,
like she had just broken the ice and he was responding with relief, but it
came off as vindictive and embarrassed. As he took all the spare money he had
in his pockets and dumped it, Sally decided to follow along with the game and
dug through her pockets a little more. By the time that Tim had turned around
smirking, she was ready with a wad of more significant bills. So Tim emptied
his wallet, and Sally emptied all the cash money she had. The percussionist
mumbled a paranoid thank you.
“I need to get to an ATM,” Tim said and laughed falsely. Sally laughed too,
then they both dashed out of the train station to their own separate ATMs for
separate banks and took out as much money as they could. They both rushed back
to the station, but Tim didn’t have his bus pass on him and had to buy one, so
when he finally got to the platform, he found Sally arguing with the musician.
“I don’t want your money,” he said. “I ain’t your whore.” Frustrated, the two
of them started offering money to passersby in vain attempts to outdo the other.
The generally middle-class crowd on the platform devoured the couple alive.
Tim and Sally gave away nearly everything they had in a weeklong spree of
hateful, competitive charity which eventually encompassed mortgages, car
title loans, and blood donations. By the end, all they really had was each
other, and they were only on their third date.
They are very generous people.
goal
(noun)
An arbitrary checkpoint in an indistinct future, which you in your wisdom
decided to set in a desperate attempt to distract yourself from how lonely
your life would be without your goals.
guilty
(adjective)
Enjoying the perverse pleasure of having done something wrong. If you’re lucky
enough sort of person, the guilt is even better than the crime. Hence the
enterprising young man who visits a prostitute, strips her down, and demands
that she call him a terrible person over and over again for the eternal two
minutes it takes for her to pretend to be fucked senseless. “Show me your
tits,” the exchange began. “Show me your tits and call me a miserable prick.”
gut
(noun)
The area from which all human inspiration flows: dark, slimy, filled with
undigested chunks of the outside world. The nature of the gut is such that
the most wonderful moments of inspiration often lead to shitty conclusions.
hangover
(noun)
Something for which Italians have no word. It could be that they’re so
tough and swarthy that they never feel the aftereffects. It could be that
they’re drunk all the time, and the closest they'll ever come to the word
hangover is vita. Whatever the case, they do not have a word. They
can’t possibly enjoy the experience like we can.
hero
(noun)
Someone who had better be dead. When heroes start coming back to life
(and believe me, they will), we’ll have to realize they don’t agree with
anything we say, do, think, or are.
homily
(noun)
What happens when a priest bombards his congregation with his own frustrations
and insecurities. Because not enough of the homeless are grateful for his
service, he tells his people to be grateful. Because he hates how he looks
in the mirror, he tells them that their bodies are temples of God. Because
his church is being sued, he tells them to forgive.
When the devout young woman with the big rack kneels exquisitely in the
front row . . . sure, she’s married, but he’s a priest, so who the fuck
cares? . . . he gets out from behind his pulpit and praises the overflowing
bounty of the Lord. When he’s spent the previous night drinking alone and
mourning the state of the world, he tells his congregation, bleary-eyed
and nauseous, that God is a vengeful judge. The boil on his toe is Job’s
leprosy. His thinning hair is God’s wrath.
It all comes apart one morning when, having forgotten to sleep off last
night’s bout of drinking, he tries to read, word for word, a newspaper
article about the latest genocide in some God-forsaken part of the world,
but all he can do is spit out fragments in-between his sobs and lamentations.
It isn’t long from then that he’s sent back to the farm to recuperate, and
a new priest, bright with hope, comes to take his place. One of the newcomer’s
first decisions is to make his homilies relevant by using the real world
as inspiration.
horror
(noun)
What happens when a bunch of men with money get together to pay shapely
women to scream.
intimate
(adjective)
To be physically/emotionally close to someone, sometimes to an extreme degree.
It is often used in various sexual euphemisms, since, “I like being intimate
with you,” sounds better to some people than, “I like to fuck you.” The problem
is that the word also implies a deeper emotional association than the
euphemism allows. It becomes slightly more difficult to have sex with a woman
when you realize that there is an entire personality powering
her crotch. Unless you manage to suppress any memory of what kind of person
she is, you can’t even try out any of your fancy moves, the tried-and-true
staples you picked up from men’s magazines. Because once she feels the labored,
self-conscious writhing in your hips, she will look you dead in the eyes
(those eyes are just a few inches away) and then she’ll say: “Don’t be such a
bullshitter.” This is why men are known to prefer porn to intimacy.
ironic
(adjective)
Describing the ultimate level of literalness. One is being ironic when one
expects one’s statements to be understood exactly as they are stated.
kuhn
(verb)
A slang term that grew popular simultaneously among Catholic high schools
across the US. To kuhn means literally to fuck through the eyesocket. It's
difficult to say exacly how the word came about. The students who popularized
the word claimed in a newspaper interview that the word originated with a
fleshy, solitary priest who taught at their school. There were immediate
charges of sexual misconduct, but the students chastised the press for their
haste, claiming that what was occurring was not so petty as molestation but
was instead complete spiritual domination. They went on to explain that kuhn
was not pronounced coon but kuhn, not from the front of the
mouth (which is racist), but from the back of the throat (which is holy).
They also claimed that kuhning only rarely happened, that it was in fact
a metaphor for the aforementioned spiritual domination. To demonstrate, one
of the students set himself on fire.
The press left to write their story, even if they weren’t sure what it was,
but they were never heard from again. Not very many know what happened to them
that day, but those that do are not about to tell the truth to the likes of you.
loud
(adjective)
The quality of believing that one’s opinions are valid.
misogyny
(verb)
Slapping a woman ain’t like it is in the movies. Whenever a man hits a woman
on film, it’s like he hits a home run. The crack resounds throughout the theater.
In reality there’d be a hollow thump because you aimed it wrong and all you’d
managed to do was push her face around. It’d be so disappointing you’d have no
choice but to beat her to death to make up for the letdown.
money
(noun)
The most beautiful dream in the world. So long as everyone agrees it’s
worth something, it is worth everything. It is our blood. It is worth more
than us. It has fostered our rise and will speed us to our inevitable collapse.
Treat it, if you have it, as the beautiful dream that it is.
natural
(adjecive)
Describing any entity or process emerging from a pile of all-devouring
ooze. It reminds me of the first time a girl grabbed my balls. Despite the
fact that I was thoroughly enjoying myself, I jumped like I was about to go
running out of the room. I must’ve looked like a frightened animal, because
she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry, honey.” She tried to
come up with something to reassure me. “It’s perfectly natural,” she said.
“But honey,” I responded, turning to look her in the eyes, “that’s exactly
what I’m afraid of.”
nigger
(word)
A good way to start a fight.
nuns
(noun)
The sweetest sin.
parable
(noun)
How liars tell the truth.
party
(verb)
To lose yourself in a crowd of people, either because you’ve joined them or
because you’ve become the one person in the room of crowded people.
patriotic
(adjective)
When the manager of the mattress store found out that three planes had
flown into three buildings half a continent away and that another had smashed
into the ground, he did a tremendous thing. He changed the sign posted twenty
feet above the parking lot. For the longest time it had announced in black,
plastic, removable letters that the store was holding a sale which may or may
not have actually been happening, but now it read, quite proudly and plainly,
God Bless America. The bridal store next door, which did not have
the advantage of the sign, did nothing.
It took a lot of effort to put the sign up like that. The manager was more
than happy to leave it that way forever. When the wind blew down the m
in America, he wasn't in the mood to change a thing. People walking
or driving by would read God Bless A erica, and they knew what it was
supposed to mean but thought gleefully of something else: usually the poor
state of grammar today or maybe someone they had once known. “Yes!” one of them shouted
to no one in particular. “God bless an Erica!” It was only a matter of time
before someone drove by and remembered an Erica who, however many years ago,
had died of a plane crash half a continent away. For one instant, the sign
that was and the sign that had been became one and the same as the rest of the letters
faded and fell away.
peace
(noun)
A gravestone without an epitaph.
penthouse
(noun)
The best place for the absurdly rich to jump from when the market bottoms out
and all their investments blow away in the wind.
power
(noun)
Walk next to a fence that only goes up to your waist, and look into the yard
at the dog that is taller than the fence, the dog that could clearly jump over
the fence and bite you in the ass. Lesser dogs would bark, on occasion larger
dogs have barked, but this dog ignores you, chewing at something indistinct
on the grass. It could very easily destroy you, or bark at you so loudly you
instinctively shit your pants, but its quiet calm frightens you even more.
You feel as if you could climb over the fence and get close enough to punch
the dog in the face without it ever bothering to move. But then it would slowly
turn its head to you in silent remonstrance. And then it would bite your
fucking head off.
pray
(verb)
To beg for mercy from something you don’t understand, such as an absent god
or your wife’s continuing tolerance.
order
(noun)
The highest state of being. Things that are in order are the best things.
To be out of order is to be a failed wreck, a shameful and ignoble contract
killer, scurrying haphazardly from one thing to the next.
quiet
(adjective)
Resigned to one’s fate, or maybe to one’s moment, or maybe you’re just waiting
for the beast in your barren jungle.
reform
(verb)
To take a broken bicycle and attach a third wheel to keep it upright. When the
wheel breaks, attach another wheel and maybe another handlebar for good
measure. With enough effort, we can all be surrounded by spokes and wheels
heading off infinitely into the spokes and wheels of space.
relationship
(noun)
A state of mutual servitude, in which (to use a simple example) party A and
party B do things for or to one another in order to keep each other happy
in their commonality. Of course, if A doesn’t have enough money to take B
where she wants to go, and B sucks off anyone with a good credit rating,
then a relationship consists of people trying to latch onto others for the
sake of their own sense of well-being, all the while asking his partner to
console him and tell him that money’s not that important and I’m a good person
and my dick’s big enough, right? Fucking bitch.
religion
(noun)
A sad comfort staring at a coffin.
representative
(noun)
Someone upon whom a constituency heaps all its hopes and complaints,
as if that someone knew what to do with them.
responsibility
(noun)
This word reminds me of a good World War II joke.
Q: How many Germans does it take to kill the Jews?
A: None. Their government does it for them!
retire
(verb)
To have earned the right to quit and die. How Americans commit suicide.
return
(verb)
To realize that even though the way you lived your life was shit, you could
never hope to be or become anything better.
revolution
(noun)
A process by which a select few take down all the structures and doodads of
society and try to put them together in ways the original creators had never
intended. Like children playing with blocks and guns and blood.
self
(noun)
The one thing in you that you really don’t want to die, not because it’s a
good thing, but because it will be the last thing to go.
self-help
(noun)
Duct tape on a sinking ship, bandaids for a shotgun blast, the pillow in
the casket, a song for the kid who coughs up blood at night, dinner for the
condemned . . . You’re gonna die, dammit, you’re gonna die! You’re helpless.
socratic
(adjective)
Describing a method of instruction whereby a teacher harangues his class
with questions until finally, after nearly endless struggle, he gets back the
answers he’d had in mind all along.
soldier
(noun)
Someone who, out of sheer high spirits, marches to his death for your greed
and your pride.
soul
(noun)
Good music.
steal
(verb)
The way to show that you love something. The most treasured items in a lawful
man’s life are the things he has stolen. The woman he loves the most is the
one he stole from someone else, and he loves her even more when the bastard
steals her back.
terror
(noun)
What you feel when, despite how you brag to your family and friends, you discover
you actually don’t want to die.
thankful
(adjective)
How you feel when you realize you don’t deserve a damned thing you have.
tight
(adjective)
Typically, an insult to control freaks, or a compliment to musicians and porn stars. My
favorite usage of the word, however, occurs in Hemingway, and I’m sure it
occurs somewhere else but the only place I can think of it is Hemingway.
It means drunk, and I’ve always wanted to come roaring out of a bar in the
middle of the night screaming, “I am so tight!” But depending on the
neighborhood, that could be a very bad idea.
title
(verb)
To summarize one’s work into something that looks good on a single sheet
of paper. There have been various schools of thought as to the proper structure
and length of titles, but to my mind, a title needs to describe quite plainly
what one’s work is all about. I am still waiting for an album that could live
up to the title Music for Driving into Oncoming Traffic. Lord help us all
if it could.
tolerant
(adjective)
Describing someone who’s tired of giving a shit how other people live their lives.
transubstantiation
(noun)
When the bread turns to body and then the wine to blood. One of the stranger
miracles of the Catholic Church. But when you’ve wasted all Saturday drunk off
your ass and spend the Mass bleary and softly shaking, the wine, as weak as it
is, is as good a miracle as you can hope for on a dead man’s Sunday morning.
trust
(verb)
What you want people to do if you plan on eventually stealing their money,
property or daughter.
university
(noun)
A place people go to pretend they’re growing up.
volunteer
(verb)
To let yourself be taken advantage of for the sake of your sense of
well-being.
wake
(verb)
What one does in-between bouts of sleeping and dreaming.
water
(noun)
A good excuse to drown.
young
(adjective)
Not quite as old as the next guy. Being young gives one the right to act
like a total dick and chalk it up to youthful inexperience. In a crowd of
70-year-olds, the 60-year-olds can run around like hot shit.