It all seems a bit CATAWAMPUS, doesn't it?

What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's...

CATAWAMPUS [kat-uh-WOM-pus] (noun or adjective)

1. Askew, crooked, diagonal (adjective)
2. An imaginary wild animal (noun)

"[T]he circle is the most beautiful shape in nature. Young gentlemen seem to be aware of this, and by means of a material called hair they contrive to manufacture faces of all forms, from a perfect circle to a catawampus ellipse. If they want an elliptical face, they create a patch of hairs on the chin...."
--North Carolina University Magazine (1852) (TWITO, page 29-30)

Try to imagine what an animal called a catawampus might look like. I picture a swamp-dwelling creature that would be a cross between a lion and an octopus. Or the Jabberwock.

We don't need another JEREMIAD...do we?

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JEREMIAD [jer-uh-MY-ud] (noun)

A long lament or complaint, or an angry harangue, derived from the name of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah

"Yes, a Jeremiad is needed. But not Mr. Noyes's kind of Jeremiad. For the whole effect of his Jeremiad is that we are going to the dogs, and that there is absolutely nothing good in free verse."
--Edmund Kemper Broadus, "The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet" in The Canadian Forum (1922) (TWITO, page 77)

Does all this uncertainty have you BRUXING?

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BRUXING (verb) [BRUKS-ing] Nervous grinding and clenching of the teeth

"Desmond’s incessant nocturnal bruxing drove his college roommate mad." (TWITO, page 24)

VECORDIOUS times, huh?

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VECORDIOUS (adj) [veh-KOR-dee-us] Mad, crazy, senseless

"Last weekend, when I went to visit my vecordious Aunt Helen at the Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital, I encountered an escaped mental patient in the parking lot. She was wearing a dress that appeared to be stitched together from latex gloves and a plastic bucket on her head as she crawled toward me like some kind of human tarantula." (TWITO, page 154)

Which way will it go? The times are DISTICHOUS

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DISTICHOUS [dis-ti-kuss] (adjective) Divided into two parts or two rows

"His tail? Distichous, say the books. Feathers are mostly distichous, hair-partings are distichous, the moustache is distichous. So is the dormouse tail; but the hairs along it do more than merely part. They curl, upwards from the root, downwards to the point, and form a plume."
--Douglas English, Wee Tim’rous Beasties (1903) (TWITO, page 42)