Hyphenated Jokes

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: more...