Coachean Debate Dictionary, Installment 2

Kritik: 1. Case you only have to write once in your entire debate career that demonstrates that every possible affirmative on any conceivable resolution is utterly laughable.

Flex prep: 1. Only opportunity you’ll get during the round to literally read your opponent’s case and try to make sense of it, since it was read aloud so fast in between multiple gaspings for breath that no one in the room, including your opponent, has the least idea what it’s all about. 2. At circuit tournaments, opportunity to sit down and take a load off your feet.

Cross Examination: 1. Alternative to flex prep, preferred by novices, lay judges, and coaches born during the Polk administration, where you have to ask your opponents to answer questions. 2. Alternative to flex prep, preferred by novices, lay judges, and coaches born during the Polk administration, where you have to avoid answering your opponent’s questions.

30: 1. The number of speaker points you thought you should get. 2. The number of speaker points you didn’t get. 3. The number of speaker points given to both teams in the down-four round by judges who, in their own debating careers, spent a lot of time in the down-four rounds.

Judge training: 1. A bad sign, if you’re waiting for your judge to arrive from it.

Judges lounge.: 1. Declarative sentence explaining what judges do during most of a tournament. 2. Imperative sentence telling the judges to cool their heels for a few minutes.

Judge’s lounge: 1. Sad attempt by novice debater to label the room where judges should go for cold coffee and whining about tab/debates/education-in-general. Misuse of punctuation assures that only one judge will be allowed in the room.

Judges’ lounge: 1. The room where judges should go for cold coffee and whining about tab/debates/education-in-general.

Education: 1. In theory arguments, that thing that your opponent’s case does not support, that you carry on your shoulders while it’s wearing laurels and doing the Queen Elizabeth royalty wave to its minions.

Topicality: 1. The ability of a debate case to reflect the resolution. 2. Argument that your opponent’s debate case bears no relationship to the resolution, including the words “and” and “the.” (NOTE: Not to be confused with “tropicality,” the ability of a debater to make you wish you were on a warm sunny island with a cold drink in your hand and a good-looking native by your side, rather than sitting here listening to this drivel. Also not to be confused with "Tropicana," purveyors of fruit juices that you'll never be served in the judges' lounges, where Tang is still the liquid of choice.)

Award ceremony: 1. Allocation of accolades from the tournament, where the top participants receive trophies. 2. [Usage, Big Bronx, always plural, “Awards Ceremonies”] Series of regularly occurring events between rounds where debaters, alumni, coaches, bus drivers, trophy manufacturers, pastry chefs, drum majorettes, chicken farmers, coal miners, door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen, Oscar Meyer Weiner truck drivers, Las Vegas showgirls, George Lucas, axe murderers, dictators from third world nations no one can find on the map, school administrators (who wear special badges to distinguish them from dictators from third world nations no one can find on the map), theremin marching bands, the inventor of the clothes pin and other forensics dignitaries are given trophies thanking them for their service to the community. Recipients who haven’t gotten a clue why they received this award are allowed to turn them in for fifty cents on the dollar and take a cash prize instead, while the trophy is recycled for the event following the next round where another hundred people will be honored.

Trophy: 1. Physical recognition of a tournament job well done.

Trophy wife: 1. Spouse of a trophy. If a trophy is female, then the correct term is trophy husband. If a trophy is of indeterminate sexual orientation, it is sent to the nearest speech tournament.