The Phobia List contains over 500 entries of phobias that have "all been found in a reference book or medical paper." It was started by an etymology hobbyist who was fascinated by their elaborate names. To look up Alektorophobia to Ephebiphobia to Zemmiphobia, just click on the above link. To see a reverse index, please click here.

Stop noodling with your axe and gimme a vamp on your doghouse, can you dig it? To help translate this deliciously jazzed up sentence, drummer Brian Floody, a professional musician active in New York's jazz scene, graciously gave us this list of jazz-related words and their meanings:

Axe	Any musical instrument
Box	Guitar
Tubs	Drums
Doghouse	Upright acoustic bass
Licorice Stick	Clarinet
Chops	A dual meaning: Technique, or for horn players, the spot where the horn meets their lips.
Woodshed	Practice (see Shed)

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BuzzWhack defines "buzzwords" as important-sounding words used to impress laypeople, and "buzzwhacker" as a person who gets pleasure out of bursting the bubbles of the pompous. Buzzwhackers out there, this one's for you! BuzzWhack demystifies one buzzword after the other on its site, including this delicious morsel: "Lawn mullet: A lawn that's neatly mowed in the front but uncut in the back." Read more buzzwords debunked here.

When spell-check can't help you: The Scripps National Spelling Bee publishes a consolidated list of 23,413 unique words. Here are a few, ahem, vexing examples. Okay, spellers -- on your mark, get set, go:

Fieriness	Frangipane
Intussuscept	Lanai
Pharisaic	Tussock
Ugli	Umbelliferous
Umpirage	Vallecula
Vaticinate	Vicennial
Viomycin	Wampumpeag
Wassailer	Weald
Whitsunday	Yautia
Zoonosis	Zygote

Here's another post from Collision Detection, the ever-fascinating blog authored by science, technology and culture writer Clive Thompson. Clive, who writes for the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Discover, among others, is a refreshingly original and independent thinker. I highly recommend his blog. This entry was posted on 6/25/06:

Think that email you're sending off to your coworker is pretty funny? According to a recent study (PDF link), the odds are that she'll find it only half as funny as you do.

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Writing that catchy slogan getting you down? Can't conjure the name of the doohickey your client's marketing? Will the following sites help? Well, not really, but they're fun to check out:

The Advertising Slogan Generator

Name-O-Rama

Random Surrealism Generator