This is, after all, how new words come into the lexicon.
Someone, sometime a while back, decided that they had a better way of saying something.
Their friends thought it was worthy of noting and some of them adopted it because it was ‘cool’.
I know this is a semi-zombie thread, but the subject was quite interesting.
Well, I was wondering about niff-naw when none of my friends had ever heard of it or knew what it meant. So I embarked to the internet to find out and the first entry I found was this one. I still don’t know where it comes from though. There is a Thoroughbred horse that showed up on the Thoroughbred race horse pedigree by the name of Niff-Naw, so I’m thinking that it may originate from my Cornish grandfather. Sounds sort of like it’s from that part of the world. I know it’s not Finnish.
“Flommy,” meaning anything weirdly undulating or swaying, causing nausea. When I was about 6, I woke up from a nap, and whined about having a “flommy dream.” I have no idea what the dream was, but the word stuck.
The ones my 3 year old have coined include:
Ato = ice cream, short for gelato as we have a gelato shop in our village
Choco-ly = A portmanteau of chocolate and snuggly
You know that thing babies do when they are really, really upset and crying where they just ball up their fists and go rigid? Some of my cousins coined the term “britchening” for this phenomenon, and so it is.
Not very imaginative but in our house all remote controls are “clickies”.
Our little space heater is referred to as an “eeky” because it has wheels and when you move it around they make an eekyeekyeeky noise.
A “biff” is a pillow fight, because that’s the Batmanesque effect of hitting someone in the face with a pillow (BIFF!).
The weirdest made-up word we use is adeeps for Christmas lights. When my oldest nephew was a toddler, we’d drive around town and look at light displays, commenting “Ah, look at the pretty lights!” or something similiar. Somehow, he got adeep from it, and a word was coined.
According to my sister, animal tallywackers are hoohoodillies. Where that came from, no one knows, but it amused TheKid to no end to say hoohoodilly. And it only refers to animal genitalia, not human.
japockey - the child’s constant and endless attempts to stay up just a little bit later
Clugs - those big clumps of snow/slush that accumulate in the wheel well.
Charette - anything that will cause someone else to have a problem. As in “Don’t leave the dishes out! Total charette city!”
Oombrie-Aago - He was the guy who did stuff at my house. Go away for the weekend and come back and the lights are on - Oombrie-Aago did it. I think he was responsible for the missing socks in the wash too.
Pibby - this little pibby went to market…this little pibby stayed home…(I couln’t say piggie when I was a kid).
Merl - what our cat says.
Libby-loes - what happens to your fingers and toes when you’ve been in the bath too long.
I know him as “Yahootie”. His main job, however, was to be responsible for turning the light on and off when you opened or closed the refrigerator door.
I want to pay to send you to veterinary school.
Not so you can “learn” “correct” nomenclature, but because I want to one day go to a vet and have the staff refer to my wife’s guide dog as a “mumpawumpa.”
Brighting, like if someone turns on the light when you’re in bed, you say, “Ahh! The light is brighting me!”. My daughter came up with that one as a little kid.
Gluggy, like ice cream is gluggy. Actually I don’t think anyone else says it, but I do and that’s what really matters.
I sometimes(not to an obnoxious extent, I don’t think) ad “-fied” to words. After a plate of pasta, I might be “spaghettified”. I take a shower to “cleanify” myself. After a good night’s sleep, I’m probably all “restified”.
Anyone else use “hoozy-doozy” as a synonym for “thingamajig” or “whatchamacallit”? I got that one from my mother.
#71 Today, 01:13 PM
Ms. Pumpkin
Guest Join Date: Jun 2007
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paintcharge
Oombrie-Aago - He was the guy who did stuff at my house. Go away for the weekend and come back and the lights are on - Oombrie-Aago did it. I think he was responsible for the missing socks in the wash too.
Umbriago - faux Italian for “I’m taking umbrage!” was a catchphrase of Jimmy Durante’s. When he had his own TV show, Umbriago was a puppet character that only Jimmy could see. He was a troublemaker, always missing and leaving Durante to take the fall.
Yehudi is an old Yiddish term for “the little man that wasn’t there”.
sorry for the formatting: I’m new and still haven’t figured it all out.
Well, huh. I did not know that! How on earth did my French-Canadian catholic family end up adopting a Yiddish word, I wonder?
Click on the quote button at the bottom right of a post you want to quote.
Welcome to the boards!
Yehudi is a Hebrew name. I don’t think it is Yiddish for anything, though it has an American cultural tie with someone/something invisible or unknowable.
Oh yeah, my daughter and I also say “arg” as a verb. Because as a preschooler when I told her not to argue, she would say “I’m not arging you!” or “don’t arg ME”. She thought I was saying, “Don’t arg, you” I guess.
I know I’m responding to a ten-year-old post, but slumgullion is a “real” word.