Anacoloutha (an-a-co’-lu-tha): Substituting one word with another whose meaning is very close to the original, but in a non-reciprocal fashion; that is, one could not use the first, original word as a substitute for the second. This is the opposite of acoloutha.
I made my bed, I smoothed my mattress. I was getting up, unready for another day. My head felt like a rusted pitchfork was poking it over and over. Yet, I had to go to work. If I didn’t, I would lose the roof over my head, I wouldn’t eat, my sartorial splendor would whither and die, and my love would become a raging tigress and scratch out my eyes. We were set to be married “pretty soon” and I needed to maintain my solvency. As a cruel and misguided bastard, my plan was to put her to work as a streetwalker and go on permanent vacation. If she sad no, I was prepared to become a rent boy, although I had just turned 33. If I wore makeup, I was pretty sure I could pass for 20. Maybe we could team up!
Anyway, my job was odious. I worked in a laundromat named Bright Linens.” We washed “linens” that had obtained skid marks due to illness, overindulgence, merrymaking, or fear. Our clientele consisted of upper-class sons of royalty: n’er do wells—sons Lords, Dukes and Barons, and scion’s of business.
I was a linen scraper—my job was to scrape the skid mark to prepare the sullied underpants for laundering. My scraper tool looked like a teaspoon. I would brush the scrapings into a barrel alongside my workbench. Once full, the barrel would be taken to a French bakery where it was ground into powdered and made up the principal ingredient of “Merde Buns,” an almost impossible to obtain delicacy, selling for outrageous prices to French emigres and Francofiles.
I resolved to steal a bag of Merde Buns and sell them on the black market. I would be wealthy and I could escape the city with my new wife-to-be. To hell with scraping! The buns were made and ready by 6.00am every day. I went into the bakery disguised as a Kure vicar and grabbed a bag—the Merde Buns Were still warm. I ran out the door and headed to the Black Market. It was a place where stolen and illicit goods were sold. Some of what was sold was the result of robbery and murder. I stood by a guy selling stolen wigs—stolen off the heads of titled women. They had tags like “Princess, hardly used.” I told him I had Merde Buns and he edged away from me shaking his head.
Suddenly, Viscount Flamboo jumped out of the crowd. He had a satchel filled with cash. He had been banned from buying or eating Merde Buns. He had fed one to his neighbor’s auk after it had delivered a ransom note announcing the kidnapping of his hamster Reginald. The auk died almost ss immediately. Over the years, Flamboo had become addicted to Merde Buns. He would die for one. “Give me the buns, and I’ll give you the cash!” He shouted. I handed over the buns, he handed over the cash.
That was it. Now that I was rich by (peasant standards). I got married. As I had hoped, my wife became a streetwalker, but she kept walking one night and I never saw her again. She left behind our little Ned, who works as a street waif, dancing jigs and collecting money in a wooden bowl.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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