I will spell these phonetically. We’ve never discussed proper spelling.
Mee-mo: money
Aah-loo: oil
Both of these words are from when I was first learning to talk and couldn’t pronounce things correctly. Somehow, they’ve just stuck in our family.
I like smucky, TeaElle. I’ll have to remember it. Thought of some more from my own family:
When my dad wanted us to hurry, he’d clap his hands and say, “Quaddi-quaddi!” He spent some time in Thailand, and according to him, this was Thai for “hurry up.” I have no idea if it really is or not.
To drudge: to wipe off the kitchen counters, clear the table, put leftovers in tupperware, etc. When my brother and I were kids, one of us would wash the dishes after dinner while the other one would do all those other things. The person with dish duty was the washer, of course, while the other person was the drudge. I still use it with my husband: “Do you want to drudge or wash?”
One that the wife of a co-worker invented, and I am doing my best to perpetuate:
Fandelier. This is a ceiling fan that also contains a light fixture.
This has caught on in my family - to the point where, when my parents were building their new house, my mom confused the crap out of one poor Hardware Store person by asking if they carried “fandeliers”.
This one’s especially useful because most people catch on to the meaning without needing a huge explanation.
And I’m taking “niff-naw” home with me. THAT is terribly useful as well.
[Geek Alert] Me, and a few of my friends, have been using a latin verb coined back in 1983: Splitere, meaning to leave precipitously, just because we’re word geeks. Usually in the first person plural imperative form: Splitemus! Not particularly useful, I’ll admit, but fun. [/Geek Alert]
Wuppy (n).
It’s a horse. I was about 5 at the time and my family and I were shopping at Sears. On display was one of those spring loaded horses that you sit on and the four springs allow you to bounce up and down. An excited kid from another family came screaming through the store up to the horse and kept repeating “WUPPY! WUPPY!! WUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPPPYYYYY!!!” My parents couldn’t stop laughing and after that, all horses became wuppies.
Smish: v. What happens to the cat when she tries to attack the broom during sweeping, or if she stands in between the fridge door and the fridge when I’m about to close the fridge door. I always tell her she’s going to get smished. I guess it sort of means, you’re in the way and I’ll do what I have to to get you out of the way, silly cat. Could work for a person, too.
A family phrase that apparently reaches to more than one branch of our (very small) family - “Real George”. Synonym: Just Great (sarcastic). You spill something on the floor? Someone says to you, “That was real George.” Car breaks down? “Real George!” Apparently, it comes from my grandfather’s cousin, who was named George and a real klutz. So any time someone did something klutzy, they were told it was a real George thing to do. Over time, it’s changed just to mean something unfortunate. The reason I know it’s not just MY branch of the family is that a few years ago, my dad tracked down some of his distant relatives via the internet and found that Real George’s progeny and descendants also use the same phrase.
When my son the Man-Cub was a wee laddie of perhaps 3, he would grab frantically at his neck and cry out, Kai !! Kai !!.
We couldn’t imagine, we thought it was some scrap of leftover Korean he had stuck in his brain.
We realized after a few times that to him, a Kai was the irritating label/tag in the back of a shirt. Once we started cutting them out, he was a mellow fellow.
We didn’t ever go in for encouraging any kind of baby talk…but this word? It’s in the family vernacular. My wife will call down, ’ can you come up and cut this Kai out for me, it’s driving me nuts ! '.
Cartooniverse
My parents bought a TV sometime in the late 60s/early 70s that came with what must have been one of the very first remote controls. The TV had a rotary dial, and the remote control had big fat buttons that would make the dial physically turn. Every time it turned, it made this “conk” sound. Somebody - probably one of my brothers - started calling the remote the “conker.” To this day, remote controls in my family are conkers.
I knew Mr. Athena was fully assimilated when one day, after not being able to find the garage door opener, he came in and asked me if I knew where the garage conker was!
A Dinosnarf is a friendly little fellow who nibbles on noses and ears when someone is in need of cheering up.
The back-back is the part of an 60’s era Volkswagen behind the back seat (can’t believe I used to be able to fit in back there!) and has now expanded to include the storage area of station wagons as well
Dorkasoid - a nerd or complete imbliot…
gizzadeetch - generic term for epiglottis
klupka - another term for epiglottis
booper - prounounced with the ‘o’ sound like booker… male or female genitalia. As in my mom would say, " oh, did you hurt your booper? " Equally used for a brother or sister.
Patina, which is actually a real word meaning:
(1)A thin greenish layer, usually basic copper sulfate, that forms on copper or copper alloys, such as bronze, as a result of corrosion.
(2)The sheen on any surface, produced by age and use.
(3)A change in appearance produced by long-standing behavior, practice, or use: a face etched with a patina of fine lines and tiny wrinkles.
is used in my family to mean “erudition”, from “a thin patina of culture”. For instance, if a piece of classical music comes on the radio, whoever first identifies it (usually my mom) is said to have won “patina points”.
To Munger (rhymes with “hunger”), is to play excessively slowly in a card or board game
We also somewhat misuse the word lagniappe, which, according to dictionary.com, is a regional word from southern Louisiana and Mississippi, meaning
(1) A small gift presented by a storeowner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
(2) An extra or unexpected gift or benefit.
We use it to mean any small present, much like Archergal’s searcy.
I have never heard this one used outside of my family.
gnurr (guh-NURR): slang for any type of small detritus, more specifically the amalgam of lint and unidentifiable foreign material that develops deep in the pockets of old garments.
There’s also hutza-plutza, a term used by my grandfather and subsequently adopted by the rest of the family, which describes an obscure and hard-to-find location where no one in his right mind would want to travel. (First employed when we were lost during a vacation in rural Vermont*)
*as opposed to the vast stretches of glittery, urbanized Vermont.
Here on the beaches of Puget Sound there aren’t many pretty sea shells, so when our family goes beachcombing, we look for interesting rocks. You might have noticed that a lot of rock names end in -ite, which is what makes this joke so good. To us, at least. On each trip to the beach, for as long as I can remember, it’s customary to ask at least once if a particular rock is a leeverite. Here’s how it goes:
Perhaps it’s my Dad and I who are walking along the beach. I spot a rock I might want to take home. As I pick it up and examine it, my Dad will ask, “Is it a leeverite?” If the rock isn’t interesting enough to keep, I’ll toss it away and say, “Yup. Leave 'er right there!”
I keep meaning to ask my Dad if he made this word up or if it’s something he picked up while growing up in Michigan. Have any of you Michiganders heard of this?
My parents both made up words all the time, though I recognize a couple of the words in this thread, like “epizootic,” which my mom calls the heebie jeebies.
creeping crud: something that’s very dirty has the creeping crud.
wubbish: very comforting. Derived from wubby (a blankie, or similar). (The u is pronounced as in book.)
skeezix: from an old comic, I think. In my family it’s any young person; punkin; punkinhead.
snarfle (also gooberize): grew up with Saint Bernards, so this is what a dog does when it lays its slobbery head on you. “I just had this coat cleaned; don’t snarfle me!” “I’ve been gooberized!”
squashle: squash
feely: very soft, usually cloth.
gigantumous (also gargantumongous, hugemongous): probably self explanatory.
eye bungers: any insect that flies at your face (I think I’ve heard others use this one, so we’re not completely weird!)
spriggy: when hair stands on end, it’s spriggy
Detroit sweep: crossing two or more lanes of traffic to take an exit ramp
Julie
All of the following are examples of many of the words my friends made up or changed the usage of. Sometimes it seems we have our own language. I suppose my family has some too, but I can’t think of them right now.
suspictroe: suspicious, derived from a drunken typo (I think my parents are getting suspictroe about me drinking)
raunk: a combination of raunchy and rank, often used to describe farts
spooning: hanging out at the local diner, or greasy spoon
skank: someone who stands up the group, also used when someone is invited to an event but refuses to come for no good reason, can be a noun or a verb (He skanked out on spooning that night).
porning: doing generally stupid things around town, such as yelling at people on sidewalks or throwing jelly packets into the canal
baby back fucking octopus: used when playing Taboo, to denote that the players in question are using too many inside jokes and thus are being too good at the game.
We refer to idiots in three different ways in my family.
Goobertron, someone mildly annoying.
SchmeckenHead, (first word pronounced shmecken) much more annoying.
DorkChop, extremely annoying.
When you get up after a hard night of drinking you may have the Squelchies. You don’t feel sick, but you feel like your body is made of rubber, or Jello Jiggler material.
Dreeshmore, someone who is always bemoaning their fate, a first class whiner.
Omathons, a unique barbarian tribe, usually made up of children acting like maniacs.
Pungoize, a fake wrestling move, where you act like your going to hit someone
but you do so very drawn out and cartoonish. Usually it’s done in slow motion, and you barely touch the person. Especially good when rough-housing with Omathons.
You folks might all enjoy http://www.pseudodictionary.com
It’s a dictionary filed with made-up words, and you can even submit your own.
My favorite word I made up (well, actually it was just “international” misspelled on a sign, but I made up a meaning to go with it) is intertional.
To be intertional is to be stubborn far past the point of it actually being advantageous to be stubborn. For example, a person who refuses to get a smoke detector because he’ll “never need it” might be said to be intertional if he still won’t get one (for the same reported reason) after his house has caught fire twice. (The word would esp. apply if he were the cause of the fires–say, by throwing cigarettes into a paper-filled trash can).
“Rye-joey” for the wrinkled fingertips you get from soaking too long in the tub.
As in: “I noticed that my fingers were getting rye-joey, so I figured it was time to get out of the tub.”
Also “Slumgullion”. That’s the word my family uses for a mixture of left-over chili with macaroni added.
HumaHuma(s)= People who ride on the short yellow bus. A Jack-ism. The fellow is dead now, but he came up with this one around the coffee table 20 years ago. I almost burst a gut because it was so unexpected. Certainly not PC.
I also come from a family that uses the word niff-naw. I know exactly what you are referring to and wonder where it comes from. My mother’s father was from Cornwall, England, and my father is first generation Finnish. Any clues.