privacy policy & legal stuff
you know, the small print stuff

Privacy Policy

We take our privacy policy seriously. We do not display e-mail addresses. This prevents spammers from “scraping” them. We will make changes if we need to to keep your contact details secure. Except for a request for permission to use a created word or what we see as an egregious violation of our guidelines, we will not share your e-mail address with any third party unless required to by law. Otherwise, contact information will be disclosed only to those who maintain the site.

For the insufficiently aware, those who set policy can also make exceptions to policy when they are so minded. Would-be submitters who deliberately violate the guidelines in an egregious fashion, nota bene: Not only will what you submit not be accepted, your e-mail address may be displayed along with sarcastic — nay, surly — comments. Since this paragraph is part of the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, displaying an e-mail address for a rejected submittal will not be considered to be a violation of our privacy policy. What we take care not to reveal is e-mail addresses for accepted submittals. E-mail addresses are revealed in the forum.

If you add your e-mail address to our mailing list, we will send you newsletters, announcements, and the very rare tutorial. We will not send you spam — i.e., unsolicited commercial e-mail. If you include your e-mail address with your entry, we will notify you when your word is accepted. Other than that, you might get a note from one of our editors telling you how much she enjoys your creative efforts. Your name and URL as entered on the “send to a friend” form are stored as a cookie on your computer, for convenience only. We do not store the e-mail addresses of friends when you use the “send to friend” feature.

We have no interest in information about specific visitors and make no effort to collect or examine it. Non-personal data is automatically collected for the purpose of tracking web statistics. This information consists of standard server logs and internet environment data such as your browser and operating system.

Terms of Use

Submitted words are to be in the public domain. Please do not submit words you or another party claim ownership to. We may want to recompile and edit submittals for commercial use. We reserve the right to edit submittals before they are added to the pseudodictionary database.

Pseudodictionary and pseudodictionary.com are trademarks. Pseudodictionary.com owns copy rights to the site layout and design and original graphics, as well as to the database of definitions (descriptions) and examples. We will actively pursue copyright infringement redress for anyone who duplicates our content without permission or otherwise abuses the fair use provisions of copyright law. The words themselves may be copied, distributed, and used in drunken conversations; however, verbatim collections taken from our database and used elsewhere are subject to legal action.

For permission to use our copyrighted material, ask HD.

When pseudodictionary.com was put up for sale, HD and Marty bought it so they could keep control of the site, its content, and its direction: fun, family friendly, and strictly non-commercial. And occasionally (if not deliberately) educational. They’re generally receptive to letting others use material from the site, as long as pd.com is given credit and linked to. They’ve even given permission to several non-commercial entities to reproduce the lexicon in full.

Do you want to use a word as a name for a website? What’s the nature of your site? Is it commercial or non-commercial? A site for education, for fun, or for news or political comment? Other than using the word for a site name, what do you plan to use it for? (If there’s money to be made, we might not object to getting a share. But it would have to be worth any tax hassle.) Will it involve products or services? Merchandise such as ball-point pens, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, or t-shirts? Advertising revenue? Greeting cards? Is it a nice site or a vice site? Is it a site we wouldn’t want to be connected with in any way? If it’s a word HD or Marty came up with, even though they’re unlikely to use it for a site name, they may want to keep the rights to pass on to their children for their use. Ask anyway.

A lot of people who use the internet have the attitude that rules are made to be broken. Our saying that “Submitted words are to be in the public domain” does not, in fact, mean that any particular word in the pseudodictionary will be. Several of our own submittals are not. Except for them, we hope submittals are in the public domain, but we can’t be sure. It’s not feasible for us to check all of the words submitted to make sure that’s the case. Our “rule” is intended for our protection, not for anyone else’s.

Look at the paragraph following the one quoted above: “Pseudodictionary.com owns copy rights . . . to the database of definitions and examples.” There’s also a copyright notice on each page. Many of the definitions and examples have significant input from our editors, making them at least in part pd.com’s intellectual property. That’s one reason we claim ownership. Another is that hundreds of the words were made up by the site principals and editors. They use multiple submitter names, so it’s not sufficient to check entries submitted by “Paul Jarvis, “HD Fowler,” or “Marty D’Mello.” Those are only three of many aliases they use. Innocently, of course.

Unless the word, definition, and example are a site principal’s creation, we are unable to give anyone permission to use them. We could say we have no objection to someone’s using a word that appears to be in the public domain, but that’s as far as we would go. If the word, definition, and example all appear to “belong” to someone else, we may be able to put someone who wants permission to use a word in touch with its creator.

To do that, we’d want permission to pass along names, e-mails, and e-mail addresses. After that, it will be between the requester and the submitter — except that pd.com must be credited appropriately. If things get to that point, let us know exactly how you’ll handle the credit and we’ll let you know whether or not it will make us happy. Making us happy is more important than you can imagine.

Are all of the sites you link to safe for my children?

Some of the sites linked to may not be for minors. Links are added by our visitors and we do not check them. Linked sites may contain obscene, offensive, profane, or sexually explicit language or other material not suitable for minors. (In addition, a site’s content may change after it has been linked to.) Persons likely to be harmed or offended by such materials are advised to use caution choosing which sites to link to.

Visit the Family Online Safety Institute to learn more about protecting your children on the internet. Always supervise your children’s internet access. You alone are responsible for assuring that your minor children do not visit “rude” sites. “V-chip software” is readily available, is inexpensive, and is easy to install and activate. Buy it and use it.

Pseudodictionary is not responsible for material on linked sites.

Do you have your heart set on finding the “naughty bits” in the pd? You know we have some, don’t you? Since you’ve been patient and read to this point, you’re about to learn a secret. We figure most visitors who bother to read this far are older, so we’ll view what you’ll find out as being in line with our aim to be family friendly. What you’ll see won’t be really, really bad, anyway.

Even the censored language is seldom as rough as that in R-rated movies. I’m sure (truthiness) it’s familiar to most teenagers. They may not use it in front of Mom or Dad or in mixed company — may not — but I’d bet my toupée many of them know it and use it among their friends. My guess is that mimicking the coarser talk of adults hasn’t changed that much since I was a foul-mouthed teenager.

In what follows, replace { with < and } with > in your searches. We use {!-- to start a string of characters to be invisibled, and --} to end the string. For words we don’t want to be found by searching, we use {!----} following the first letter of the “offending” word. So, to find the “naughty bits,” all you have to do is search for {!----}. You’ll find several pages of stuff you might not turn up otherwise.

We really are doing this just for fun. (That’s why we reserve the right to give your first-born child a funny name.) Completely innocent fun except for the occasional use of a rude word or phrase. Since the message boards are run separately from the dictionary part of the site, rough language and links to objectionable sites are more likely to creep in there. Our editors do a good job monitoring the message boards, but are unable to catch everything.

If you have any concerns about how we run the site, let us know. Thank you for visiting. Please enjoy your stay.

The privacy policy & terms of use can change without notice.