Hyphenated Yellow Page Words

In a recent readers' contest, The Washington Post asked contestants to take any hyphenated heading at the top of any page of the Yellow Pages and create a definition for the compound word they formed. Some of our favorite entries:


Advertising-Air: Touting a product when you already have a monopoly with no alternatives. "Seeing ads for U.S. postage stamps is like advertising-air."


Alcohol-Apartments: Universities used to call these "dormitories."


Artificial-Asphalt: Polenta.


Balancing-Balloons: Silicone implants on just one side to "even things up."


Banquet-Beauty: A euphemism for a plus-size woman.


Child-Duct: An FCC-acceptable euphemism for part of the female anatomy.


Chiropractors-Christmas: A forecast of freezing rain and heavy, wet snow.


Curtain-Dancing: What burlesque queens resort to when they've lost the figure for fan-dancing.


Demolition-Dentists: Let us rearrange your mouth in a single visit.


Foam-Foods: The nation's top supplier of airline meals.


Granite-Grocers: Specializing in those holiday fruitcakes.


House-Human: The token normal person at Michael Jackson's home.


Iron-Jewelers: For the gift that tells her you'd tolerate her all over again.


Kitchen-Labor: Term of endearment likely to go over even less well than "the old ball and chain."


Lawn-Lawyers: Little statues of guys in business suits holding attache cases -- for the discriminating homeowner who'd never have a lawn jockey.


Movers-Moving and Nurses-Nursing: What I got on the 13th and 14th days of Christmas.


Piano-Pizza: An industry term for household pets that get in the way of furniture movers.


Radio-Ready: Less than photogenic. "That guy has a face that's radio-ready."


Rental-Reporters: The memo line on Armstrong Williams' pay stub.


Rubber-Safe: Where the bank puts the bounced checks.


Sheet-Social: Code phrase for a KKK rally.


Stools-Storage: Label on a vault in Howard Hughes' home.


Wedding-Welding: Up to 40 percent less likely to be put asunder!