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Making up words

Debora_sPenDebora_sPen
edited October 2015 in Writing
So we all use words, right? Existing words. How are we at making news ones up?
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Comments

  • Debora_sPenDebora_sPen
    For example, here's one of mine:
    "verbal selfie" = bio :-j
  • Phots MollPhots Moll
    I've made some up accidentally.
  • Debora_sPenDebora_sPen
    Such as?
  • Tiny NellTiny Nell
    We say 'Cash & Flash' instead of 'Pay & Display'.
  • Phots MollPhots Moll
    I just meant typos. I've made up place names deliberately, to use as story locations. That's not quite the same though.
  • Debora_sPenDebora_sPen
    :)) "Cash & flash" is great, Tiny! Phots, yea, I guess not quite the same.
  • Phots MollPhots Moll
    edited October 2015
    A friend of mine once get confused with escalating and snowballing and ended up saying things were Eskimoing.
  • Emma BEmma B
    Ooh I don't notice that I make them up very often but I do sometimes get things the wrong way round and it ends up as a made up one. I should keep more of a note of those things because some of these can end up lovely very individual expressions. I love the word 'Eskimoing'

    I also have a few Cumbrian expressions that I am regularly learning aren't universally recognised.

  • datco2014datco2014
    Robert (rabbie) Burns was a master at making words up so he could rhyme things - himmorous horbirous Houstie get outside horrible moosie - ( ok made most of that up) but it probably helped he was writing at a time when most people couldn't read or were ignorant - if someone asked him for example what a himmorous horbirous Houstie was he'd simply say - och it's an Old Scottish saying that means my bums sore.
  • JediyaJediya
    My mum's always mixing words together cause she argues with herself over which to use. Can't think of one off the top of my head though.. it's so common.

    I made up confuzzled years ago = confused and puzzled. Still use it. Then found it was in the urban dictionary. I know I've been using it for about 10 years or so though.
  • boredrobotsboredrobots
    I know a lot of people that use confuzzled :P
  • JediyaJediya
    Stealing my word :P
  • Tiny NellTiny Nell
    My daughter used to call pins and needles 'needles and pencils', and referred to a serviette as a 'flat'. The other one callled cucumbers 'pimpumbers'.
  • Debora_sPenDebora_sPen
    "ego phobia" = chronic fear of knowing the self
    "literiphany" = the moment when a great story idea strikes (aka middle of the night) :D I have these all the time.
  • Phots MollPhots Moll
    Is 'fogbound flippitty flip flops' common, or is that one of ours?
  • Patricia LesleyPatricia Lesley
    Boffice
    Ditting-room
  • Island GirlIsland Girl
    My younger siblings and I used to invent new words such as bow-elle instead of elbow, balconsea for a balcony overlooking the beach, smorhercate as a mix of smother and suffocate.
    I once misheard someone describing a drunk person as Pissed as a Parrot so even today I still say they're Cisco the Carrot.
  • LizLiz
    We call breakfast 'breffters' as both our children called it.

    Asked son what they had for dinner at friend's house - beans, fish fingers and muffles (waffles!).

    BBC1 and BBC 2 when he was very, very young were called 'Baby see one and baby see two.
  • Debora_sPenDebora_sPen
    Liz, I think balconsea and smothercate could become real words! They're cool.
  • Debora_sPenDebora_sPen
    Yep, whaddya know:
    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=smothercate
  • Tiny NellTiny Nell
    I just came across this:

    'Hangry': A state of anger caused by a lack of food. May evoke negative change in emotional state.
  • C2C2
    Boglets - portable loo's.
    The first time I used or went to use one, should I say, I
    closed the door and walked away.
    After seeing that mess I was amazed they were still being used.
  • ana sana s
    My daughter (3), provoked beyond all measure by her brother, struggled to express her immense rage. 'SOOPID CRAT DOG!' was the best she could do - but the venom.
  • LizLiz
    edited October 2015
    Do you use 'soopid' now, ana?

    About the same age when I was complaining about something, Jem said 'was you disgustified'?

    This is in my book of his sayings, along with the time I came in to find him watching the News, aged 4. 'This is vilent putrescence' he announced.
  • Tiny NellTiny Nell
    Oh, I wish I'd written down all the funny things my girls said. How lovely that you've done that, Liz.
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