Humor

Entry for the new American Heritage Dictionary, First Executive Edition
Submitted by Anabel Dwyer 1/21/02 to the NYTimes

en-ron (en-ron) tr.v., -roned, -ronting,-ronts 1. To induce investors, suckers, or taxpayers to hand over money with expectation of profit or benefit for what inside brass know are non-existent, unworkable, so-called goods or services. 2. To squander workers’, employees’ life-savings. 3. To shred documents (usually while photographed with sweet looking children). 4. To hoodwink investors. 5. To bribe (contribute to public officials) for regulatory breaks. 6. To commit accounting fraud within the rules. 7. To practice a combination of slippery accounting, insider audits and trading, tax evasion, regulation manipulation, shell games, shredding, lying, cheating and stealing for short-term profit.
Synonyms. lockheed, boeing, TRW, raytheon. These verbs mean loosely to squander or formally to commit fraud, intentional misrepresentation of known fact. Lockheed, Boeing, TRW, Raytheon (after fraudulent practices of late 20th c. early 21st c. failed military, called deceptively, defense contractors) involves intent to squander, not only life-savings but also many lives and/or life itself, primarily with public funds, on unbelievably obscene weapons and tactics of mass destruction. Obs.- the method in vogue in the early 21st c.. Interesting but flawed ultimately self-contradictory technique by which US government made criminals out of citizens if they did pay taxes or if they refused to pay taxes. Even if a peon didn’t get charged with a crime the vast majority paid so that a few got filthy rich. [Lat. enroncere, to make rotten, stinky or foul <Cicero, “lovus o layus”.]

en-ron (en-ron) n., pl. , enrons 1. The tip of an iceberg. 2. The first to go the way of all slimebags. 3. Private interest in public energy reserves. 4. Disappearance, as in Dick Cheney. 5. Snake-oil.

Synonyms. red-herring, deflection, bushboy. These nouns refer to distractions so that self-appointed big-wigs can rake it in and run like hell before the big collapse.