New words for the OED
A friend of mine was typing random words into Google (as you do) and came up with a number of words which returned only a single hit - suggesting they are either typing errors or invented.
Since these words were far too good to waste, he invented some definitions. Particular favourites are as follows:
slithermeister
Noun. Person who is oily, insincere and ingratiating. See also
monkhouse’, ‘winton’ and ‘bargainhunt’
smudgemuffins
Noun. Generic term to cover any affectionate pet names used by couples
which induce the urge to vomit in others.
I would add to this a few of my own, namely:
Confloption
(from the Greek con-floptos) Causing an abnormal commotion or disturbance, May be used as a noun (‘she was arrested for causing a confloption in the highstreet’) or an adjective (the city was in a state of confloption). Similar to a kerfuffle, only more so.
“Having a canary”
Term used to describe a person in a state of argumentative agitation, characterised by the waving of the arms in similar manner to a canary in flight. Usually used with reference to my mother, often in the context of map-reading.
Afflueffluence
A state of affluence characterised by a tendency to speak a lot of rubbish. Most frequently to be found amongst landed gentry in rural Somerset.
Now, according to the official website of the Oxford English Dictionary (and I quote):
The rule of thumb for the OED is that a word can be included if it appears five times, in five different printed sources, over a period of five years. However, such is the pace with which terms are introduced and spread today that words can demand inclusion within a year of their first appearance.
So, your challenge, fellow readers, should you choose to accept it, is to make sure these words appear in print and in common parlance sufficiently to qualify for entry by this time next year… Feel free to add your own.
February 1st, 2005 at 10:29 am
I believe that you and I, Becky, are in an ideal position for this. I’m always up for a bit of meme-planting.
I’ll see what I can do…
February 1st, 2005 at 11:53 am
I can see “confloption” catching on… I’ll do my bit!
February 1st, 2005 at 12:15 pm
Actually, I was looking on Goggle and ‘confloption’ is listed as a word of Cornish dialect, meaning ‘a flurry’. This is interesting, as my parents (who are from Hampshire) used it all the time when I was a child, but nobody outside of my family ever knew what we were talking about. It’s still not in the OED though.
February 1st, 2005 at 4:37 pm
I’m not so sure about wholly made up words… but I’m well into verbing.
I asked Wood to ‘action’ something - he quoted Calvin & Hobbes at me, ‘verbing weirds language’ and blamed my work environment.
Then I realised that I’ve been doing it all my life. Sometimes when I tried to explain something the verb I wanted would excape my brain, so I had to make one up. My mum’s favorite was a request, in reference to the car door, to ‘key it’.
February 2nd, 2005 at 4:03 am
Hmm… why does the example of confloption being used as an adjective use it as a noun?
February 2nd, 2005 at 6:42 am
We can verbate and nounate and adjectivate these, can’t we? I mean, really, who’s gonna stop us? I yearn to conflopt my slithermeister of a boss over his arrogant, afflueaffluentine behavior, causing him to break into hives or at the very least, have a canary.
February 2nd, 2005 at 5:13 pm
Typical. As soon as I conclude that the site is pining for the fjords and stop checking it on a daily basis, you start writing stuff again.
For years I have used ‘thag’ to mean ‘to annoy by persistently waving something in the face’. It may also be used figuratively, as with excessive public displays of affection etc.
February 2nd, 2005 at 5:47 pm
“Thag” - thats a good one.
Good to see you, Ed.
February 2nd, 2005 at 6:03 pm
Has anyone else come across the terms ’somewhen’ and ‘anywhen’ used instead of sometime and anytime (as in, ‘I’ll see you somewhen’. We used to use them all the time when living in Southampton and when I moved to Somerset as a child I wondered why all my essays had a big red circle round these words and ‘this doesn’t exist’ written in the margins.
Another good old word I remember my nan using is ’shrammed’ as in really really cold. She’d come in from the garden and go, ‘Ooo I’m shrammed’.
My other nan had some choice expressions, among them:
‘You’ll scramble ‘is little brains’ (to my mum when dangling my brother upside down)
‘Ooo, you weren’t ‘urt there’ - to express admiration for getting a good bargain
‘Mind all ‘is wrinkles and dinkles’ - a washing command which, roughly translated, means ‘make sure you wash that baby thoroughly’.
May 17th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
how dare u steal my word-SMUDGEMUFFIN….i made it up…..i own the word…..u cant go around stealing people’s words……..u disgrace me……….u have destroyed my honour and my sense of dignity………that word was all i lived for……..i dont think i can go on living……….there is no point me being on this earth, wasting precious oxygen, when there is no reason for me to live……..this is what u made me, johnheronproject
May 18th, 2005 at 8:51 am
Actually, strictly speaking, I stole it from my husband’s friend Jim (the ‘friend’ referred to in the original entry). You’re not called Jim are you, by any freaky coincidence? (In which case, apologies for stealing your word but it was just soooo cool I couldn’t resist…)
The alternative is that we have tapped into some freaky collective subconscious, whereby we are all randomly making and re-shaping words out of our own collective experience. Occasionally these collide, resulting in spontaneous outbursts of creative activity.
To give an example, if you give a random sample of 15 kids at opposite ends of the country three cardboard boxes and an egg box, the chances are tha,t within an hour or so, some of them at least will have created a pretty scary looking robot. Or the fact that different tribes across the world all find the concept of ducks hilarious. Or the fact that any man, from any culture, left alone in a room with a teacosy will eventually put it on his head as a hat. It’s a Jungian thing…
Or maybe I just nicked it. Sorry.
June 5th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
I used the word ’shrammed’ recently to describe 2 friends who were walking round St Ives last week looking shrivelled with cold. They had never heard the word and thought I’d made it up. I checked with my dad who confirmed that his (Hampshire) family used it all the time. Google came up with several mentions including a poem by Hardy, and it does seem to be West country in origin. But it’s not in OED and it deserves to be- such a useful and descriptive word in these days of global warming…
Has anyone heard the expression ‘having a blue vinegar fit’ (throwing a wobbly) or’like a cow with a muskett’ (awkward and clumsy) ?
June 5th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Hey, that’s really interesting. My nan used to use it all the time (she’s from Southampton) but nobody here in Wales had ever heard of it. Did you use somewhen and anywhen as well? These were common words in Southampton, which everybody used, but when I used them after moving to Somerset nobody understood what I was talking about.
I hadn’t heard of ‘having a blue vinegar fit’ or ‘like a cow with a muskett’ but I will use them from now on. I guess having a blue vinegar fit is a little like having a canary (see earlier entry).