The Jolly Contrarian’s Dictionary
The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™


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Anal /ˈeɪn(ə)l/ (adj.)
(Not to be confused with “annal” or “annual): Excessively pedantic (supposedly owing to toilet-training conflict in infancy, or having been beaten up, had one’s lunch money stolen and one’s head jammed down the lavatory at boarding school). Consequently, anal retentivity can be a single, overwhelming source of joy for a certain kind of legal eagle, whose infantile psychosexual development promotes defecation — figurative defecation, all over your elegant draft — as the major source of sensuous pleasure and self-awareness. It is as well that you understand this, so you can appropriately react to it, namely, by accepting it with the grace of the pragmatist’s prayer.

See especially the anal paradox.

See also