(JERR-ee-man-der)

Means: To draw voting district lines in weird shapes so your side wins more seats.

Etymology: In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed off on a state senate map with one district so twisted that a Boston Gazette cartoon drew it as a winged monster and called it "The Gerry-mander," half Gerry, half salamander. The catch: Gerry said his name with a hard G, like "Gary," so the word started out as "Gary-mander." Everybody says it with a J now, and Gerry went on to be vice president anyway.

"The way he splits the bar tab, with all the cheap beers on his side, is a straight-up gerrymander."

By the late 1970s, some architects were sick of plain glass boxes, so they brought back columns, arches, and bright colors, used half as a joke. That's postmodernism: borrowed history, cartoon proportions, and a wink. Michael Graves built the loud Portland Building in Oregon in 1982, and in 1985 he designed a kettle for the Italian company Alessi with a little red plastic bird on the spout that sings when the water boils. Graves later designed more than a thousand cheap household goods for Target, which is how postmodernism ended up in your kitchen drawer.

Zamboni is a brand name, not the name of the machine. The generic term is ice resurfacer. Frank Zamboni ran the Iceland skating rink in Paramount, California, where smoothing the ice took four or five guys scraping, squeegeeing, and spraying for about an hour and a half. He spent years tinkering in the shop, and in 1949 his Model A did the whole job by itself in about 15 minutes. Skating star Sonja Henie bought one to take on tour, and the name stuck to every machine after it.

The kid at the liquor store didn't card me tonight. Didn't even look up.

Just rang up my twelve-pack and said, "Need help out to the car, sir?"

The man who makes it doesn't need it.

The man who buys it doesn't use it.

The man who uses it never knows it.

What is it?

Answer in tomorrow's issue.