He Meant, She Meant Read online

  SHE MEANT:

  dim adj. describes a sort of people and lighting that flatter you but then leave you with a headache.

  HE MEANT:

  dim adj. dull. One of Dan Quayle’s former professors at DePauw described the former vice-president as “a dim bulb.”

  SHE MEANT:

  direct adj. outright, explicit, dull.

  HE MEANT:

  direct v. to control.

  SHE MEANT:

  discipline n. inner strength and will. Essential for dieting, tai chi, attending military academies, and suing military academies in order to attend them.

  HE MEANT:

  discipline n. the ability to ignore distractions and press on. Easier to achieve if your mind is limited and you don’t notice the distractions in the first place.

  SHE MEANT:

  dishonesty n. the telling of partial truths in order to avoid hurting others.

  HE MEANT:

  dishonesty n. lying.

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  disillusionment n. the stepping-stone to maturity; the evaporation of trusty clichés and classic hopes into little piles of dust.

  HE MEANT:

  disillusionment n. the loss of a pleasant dishonesty—makeup, for example.

  SHE MEANT:

  distance n. the invisible barrier between people who would otherwise be great friends or decent spouses.

  HE MEANT:

  distance n. space. You need distance most from those who give you the least.

  SHE MEANT:

  distant adj. 1. in another country or state. 2. in another emotional country or state.

  HE MEANT:

  distant adj. how a woman may describe you, if you don’t quit your job to listen to her.

  SHE MEANT:

  divert v. 1. to distract by entertaining. 2. to shift attention or funding to the place it is most needed.

  HE MEANT:

  divert v. to deflect. What a man tries to do, to the admiring glance a stranger aims at “his” woman (by moving closer to her, brushing his fingers on her arm, and glaring at the starer), while simultaneously diverting the attention of “his” woman away from that man, ideally before she notices the stare.

  SHE MEANT:

  divorce 1. v. to fail as a marriage. 2. n. a painful process through which one becomes a divorcee—a wise, oversexed person.

  HE MEANT:

  divorce v. to dissolve, as a marriage. A word savored only by your lawyer and your mistress.

  SHE MEANT:

  dizzy adj. given to falling over. Can be a symptom of any of a number of trendy dilemmas: eating disorders, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, obsessive love. SeeFAINT.

  HE MEANT:

  dizzy adj. how you feel the first time an attractive woman smiles on you—and each time thereafter.

  SHE MEANT:

  doll n. a perfect human being; a docile toy. While boys do have dolls, they are always male; girls play with both male and female dolls. This explains a lot.

  HE MEANT:

  doll n. something respectable men used to call women. It was a compliment.

  SHE MEANT:

  domination n. when you choose to tickle instead of being tickled.

  HE MEANT:

  domination n. when no one dares tickle you.

  SHE MEANT:

  dream n. the truth that you know—and the rest of the world has yet to discover.

  HE MEANT:

  dream n. the desire that you know—and hope the rest of the world will never discover.

  SHE MEANT:

  dress v. to throw clothes on the floor, while dabbing nail polish on the run in your nylons and realizing that none of your shoes matches anything else you own.

  HE MEANT:

  dress v. to wear what is reasonably clean.

  SHE MEANT:

  drive 1. n. ambition. He liked her drive. 2. v. to navigate a car. He liked her to drive.

  HE MEANT:

  drive 1. v. to hit powerfully, as a golf ball or a baseball. 2. n. a passion for something, as for success, food, or whoopee. 3. v. to maneuver, as a car or other vehicle. “Bend over, honey—I’ll drive.”

  SHE MEANT:

  drone 1. v. to go on and on. 2. n. a bee who serves the queen. (Females do dominate the insect world, whatever that’s worth.)

  HE MEANT:

  drone n. a man who doesn’t work, has no sting, and makes no honey.

  SHE MEANT:

  drugs n. pl. 1. items promoted and sold mostly by men before they go into politics and fight against them. 2. medications prescribed to fight infections, depression, and boredom.

  HE MEANT:

  drugs n. pl. substances that fiddle with your brain, sometimes successfully.

  SHE MEANT:

  drunk adj. a state in which you do things you later regret.

  HE MEANT:

  drunk adj. a state in which you do things you later forget.

  SHE MEANT:

  Dutch adj. the practice of splitting the tab on unsuccessful dates. If he likes you he should pay to prove chivalry is not dead, and if you like him you should pay so he’ll feel guilty and take you out again. If you don’t like each other, go Dutch.

  HE MEANT:

  Dutch adj. a treat for your wallet, but maybe less so for the organ next to your wallet.

  E

  SHE MEANT:

  eager adj. 1. impatient to love. 2. overly excited. 3. how puppies and boys are. More endearing in puppies.

  HE MEANT:

  eager adj. to be excited about something that may not happen. One of the first feelings a man learns to hide—because showing eagerness can ensure the thing won’t happen.

  SHE MEANT:

  early adj. prompt. There are early people and late people. Many women start life as early people, then discover that no one is there to meet them and become late people—or just bitter.

  HE MEANT:

  early adj. what you ought not be for a date, so as not to appear too eager.

  SHE MEANT:

  earnest adj. so honest that you volunteer self-undermining information.

  HE MEANT:

  earnest adj. humorless. An appropriate trait, for occupations like “banker.”

  SHE MEANT:

  earring n. jewelry that reveals character. Two earrings say she has a basic threshold for pain, three signify adventurousness, and four indicate she lacks judgment in her analysis of trends.

  HE MEANT:

  earring n. an ornament on which it’s good to nibble.

  SHE MEANT:

  earth mother n. a woman who nurtures passersby, produces children effortlessly, and wears funky shoes.

  HE MEANT:

  earth mother n. a woman who doesn’t wear miniskirts or shave her armpits.

  SHE MEANT:

  easy adj. 1. laid-back, relaxed. “Don’t worry, I’m easy.” 2. sexually laid-back, relaxed. “Don’t worry, she’s easy.”

  HE MEANT:

  easy adj. the type of woman you don’t bring home to mother, because there just isn’t time.

  SHE MEANT:

  eat v. to have a sexual experience without needing to call your lover.

  HE MEANT:

  eat v. 1. to engulf, chewing as necessary. 2. to give an oral performance that requires few encouraging words—although “thank you” comes to mind,

  SHE MEANT:

  eavesdrop v. to participate vicariously in a conversation simply by overhearing it.

  HE MEANT:

  eavesdrop v. to passively pry. Men frown on this, since eavesdropping does not allow us to interrupt.

  SHE MEANT:

  effort n. collective or individual will. A group effort. Sadly, effort can lead nowhere. Jan had her colors done in an effort to put some life back into her dying marriage. She discovered she was a winter.

  HE MEANT:

  effort n. something that makes you sweat.

  SHE MEANT:

  egocentric adj. utterly self-centered. A sign that someone is either a complete jerk or has been in psy
choanalysis for too long.

  HE MEANT:

  egocentric adj. anyone who can’t see that the world doesn’t revolve around him but instead revolves around me.

  SHE MEANT:

  egomania n. a condition in which the afflicted takes the question “How are you?” literally.

  HE MEANT:

  egomania n. a disease you detect in the person who dumps you.

  SHE MEANT:

  egregious adj. embarrassingly bad. Jan’s color consultant told her that since she was a winter, it would be an egregious error for her to wear yellow.

  HE MEANT:

  egregious adj. a major error, such as forgetting to tag at third on a deep fly ball.

  SHE MEANT:

  elegant adj. embodying the art of dressing divinely and not talking too much.

  HE MEANT:

  elegant adj. when you wear dark socks with shoes. With shorts, you don’t need the socks.

  SHE MEANT:

  eligible adj. describes a bachelor who does dashing things while remaining emotionally stable.

  HE MEANT:

  eligible adj. describes a woman who flirts.

  SHE MEANT:

  eloquence n. the ability to convince anyone of anything whether you believe it or not.

  HE MEANT:

  eloquence n. the ability to make gray areas look silver.

  SHE MEANT:

  embarrass v. to mortify. Easy to do to teenagers. Also to men, except men will be embarrassed that they were embarrassed and may not be able to talk to you again.

  HE MEANT:

  embarrass v. to cause to blush and/or giggle. Easy to do to women: talk about another woman exactly the way you would describe her to men. (A woman who does not become embarrassed is one with whom you may be honest.)

  SHE MEANT:

  emoticon n. sideways smiley faces that indicate tone on the Internet. Bubbles told Steve he was no good at cybersex, and followed the statement with the happy emoticon :-) so he could tell she was just kidding.

  HE MEANT:

  emoticon n. a method of expressing emotion without moving a facial muscle or saying word one. Steve had never seen an emoticon, didn’t understand it, and felt insulted.

  SHE MEANT:

  empathy n. walking in the shoes of others, feeling all their problems as keenly as if they were yours. A female specialty. Our own problems just aren’t enough for us.

  HE MEANT:

  empathy n. acknowledging another’s pain. Steve, looking for empathy, explained to Tim how insulted he had felt. “It sucks to be you,” said Tim.

  SHE MEANT:

  empire 1. n. an extensive kingdom with lots of zip codes and subjugation. 2. adj. refers to a vague waistline popular in the reign of the Empress Josephine, now particularly useful for pregnant brides.

  HE MEANT:

  empire n. a type of government acceptable only when it is ancient or privately owned.

  SHE MEANT:

  employee n. someone who gets blamed for your worst mistakes.

  HE MEANT:

  employee n. someone who understands that the boss wants suggestions to improve the company, not her personality.

  SHE MEANT:

  encourage v. 1. to egg someone on by not rejecting him. 2. to support the career paths, personal decisions, and peculiar habits of loved ones.

  HE MEANT:

  encourage v. the male equivalent of “nurture.”

  SHE MEANT:

  enemy n. someone who once made you angry, and you never managed to tell them so.

  HE MEANT:

  enemy n. person who wants something you have, or has something you want.

  SHE MEANT:

  engagement n. a good term to use if you’re trying to break up with someone you’re dating. See REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY.

  HE MEANT:

  engagement n. a battle. The engagement at Okinawa resulted in heavy losses.

  SHE MEANT:

  engenderment n. the process of turning into a boy or a girl. Anyone confused should pick a gender and run with it.

  HE MEANT:

  engenderment n. the process of becoming a man. You’ll find out how well you’re doing at your eulogy,

  SHE MEANT:

  enjoy v. to derive pleasure; to revel in an experience; to live in the moment.

  HE MEANT:

  enjoy v. what the waiter who wants to show good intentions may invite you to do with your food.

  SHE MEANT:

  enraged adj. beyond angry, due to frustration residue.

  HE MEANT:

  enraged adj. pissed off, big-time. To enrage a man, insult his mother. Or blame him for not doing something he didn’t know he was supposed to do. To really enrage him, do the blame thing, and be his mother.

  SHE MEANT:

  enterprise n. 1. a business undertaking. 2. the quality that makes one undertake an undertaking.

  HE MEANT:

  enterprise n. the motivation to boldly go where no one has gone before, or at least not recently. Like Pluto, or Topeka.

  SHE MEANT:

  equivocate v. to waver between indecision and desire.

  HE MEANT:

  equivocate v. having started strong and sounded resolute, to realize suddenly the implications of what you just said and start to cover it over as best you can without retracting it, exactly.

  SHE MEANT:

  erogenous adj. a zone where men get lost because of their refusal to ask for directions.

  HE MEANT:

  erogenous adj. a zone where women get lost because of their reluctance to give directions.

  SHE MEANT:

  erotic adj. sexual in a heightened, literary, or peculiar way. In Bubbles’s e-mail to Steve, she wrote that she found soft, unattached earlobes especially erotic.

  HE MEANT:

  erotic adj. sexy. For Steve, even the phrase “fleshy earlobes” was erotic.

  SHE MEANT:

  eroticize v. to translate into the language of love.

  HE MEANT:

  eroticize v. to find erotic properties in an object that seems to have none; the principal task of adolescence. Like when you hump a sofa.

  SHE MEANT:

  eternity n. the amount of time spent waiting in line when you have to be somewhere else.

  HE MEANT:

  eternity n. the amount of time that goes by between one’s first sexual encounter and one’s second.

  SHE MEANT:

  euphemism n. a gentle characterization, lately inclined toward political correctness. “Horizontally challenged” is a euphemism for “fat.” Euphemisms usually do not fully express the situation at hand. “Thoughtless” is a euphemism; seeEVIL.

  HE MEANT:

  euphemism n. polite phrase, the sexual implications of which may be denied. “Gosh, that’s a nice dress, Susan,” for example, or “Camilla, I wish I were your tampon.”—Prince Charles.

  SHE MEANT:

  everyone n. those people who are used as evidence for underwhelming arguments. “But everyone’s into nipplepiercing now.”

  HE MEANT:

  everyone n. those people who are out having sex while you’re home alone.

  SHE MEANT:

  evil adj. thoughtless, absent, or aloof.

  HE MEANT:

  evil adj. women who cheat—unless they are cheating with you.

  SHE MEANT:

  ex n. someone who is always spoken about in the past tense, even when still alive. “You smoke? My ‘ex’ smoked.”— The “ex” has neither died nor given up smoking, he has simply ceased to exist on a certain abstract level.

  HE MEANT:

  ex n. 1. a woman you dumped, after you realized you didn’t like her. 2. a woman who dumped you, before you realized you didn’t like her.

  SHE MEANT:

  exaggeration n. a pastime invented by early hunters in their description of the woolly mammoth that got away. Since then, men have exaggerated the size and scope of most everything around them, with few repercussions and a surprising amount of succe
ss. Women are less prone to exaggerate, since we are more adoring of the accurate transmission of lovable details.

  HE MEANT:

  exaggeration n. act of overstating the truth, as when trying to convince a dating prospect or a game warden that an entity is twelve inches long.

  SHE MEANT:

  exercise n. 1. an activity intended to make you a few sizes smaller. 2. any ritualized process without hope. An exercise in futility.

  HE MEANT:

  exercise n. 1. an activity intended to make you a few sizes bigger. 2. an activity intended to help others feel a few sizes smaller.

  SHE MEANT:

  exhibitionist n. a person who feels that clothes get in the way of things. Easy to find on beaches, on the stages of certain theaters, and in health clubs. It’s hard to say whether the workout craze created more exhibitionists or simply got them all together in the same place, but this way it’s more convenient for everyone involved.

  HE MEANT:

  exhibitionist n. someone who shows parts of him- or herself to people who don’t want to see them. If people want to see them, the exhibitor is known as a “model.”

  SHE MEANT:

  exotic adj. describes a type of vacation.

  HE MEANT:

  exotic adj. describes a type of dancer.

  SHE MEANT:

  expect v. to tell all your friends that something desirable will happen.

  HE MEANT:

  expect v. to believe that someone should know you well enough to do this one lousy thing without your having to say what it is.

  SHE MEANT:

  expectation n. how you imagine things will turn out, only to be disappointed later. Jan had once had expectations that Lloyd would be a nurturing father because he was so good about watering the plants.