“Sprue” is already a word that I’ve occasionally heard used, with a meaning which would make you think that someone had made it up and posted it in this thread as a homemade word: “The usually plastic rod or framework that secures molded objects, such as model parts or game pieces, before their first use.”
My contribution is “to munger”, which means to think way too much and play very slowly during a (card) game. “Stop mungering” is a cry that one frequently hears.
I forgot one we used to use all the time:
Gaper - An uncool and/or weird person. “That guy my sister is dating is such a gaper”
George MacDonald Frazer used the word “poont” in one of the Flashman novels. Naturally, Flashy was describing the boobiferous attributes of a particular woman, so you may wish to reconsider this one.
History tells us the word "gazongas"had not been invented at that time.
Kloon - a person who just won’t go.
Used as a pejorative against drivers who make everyone else wait in traffic through inattention or timidity. Driver who has the right of way who waits until the driver without the right of way finally goes first? That’s a kloon. Driver in the left turn lane who who declines to go though perfectly safe gaps in traffic, waiting for a gap a mile wide? Kloon. Anyone who drives far slower than the speed limit? Kloon.
qpq, “munger” is already a word. I first encountered it in Inside Macintosh Vol I, as the name of a string-manipulation function.
True, but pronounced munJer, as opposed to rhymes-with-hunger.
Most of ours are malapropisms from my boys’ childhood.
Pie Pies - French fries
Garbage bread - Garlic bread
Wrigglies - long thin pasta
Boonkies - boots
The Mongrel Horde - our dogs
From my contract engineering days:
“Borker” = contract technical recruiter, from the misspelling of “broker” on a particular message board, ie, a job shop recruiter. The connotations of “borking” and “got borked” just seem appropriate. The term appeared in the era of Judge Bork’s defamation who got borked as well.
“Triangles” = Bodybuilders, workout junkies.
Isn’t Pie Pie the sailor man who likes spinach?
The Simpsons has been mentioned. Here’s another made-up word that made it out into the wild:
Jackhole
Coined by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla on The Kevin & Bean Show on KROQ sometime in the '90s. I remember when they came up with it. (Well, not when, but I remember listening to the radio in the car when they did.) I thought it was kind of dumb. But this is the show that made a potato famous, so what do I know?
That’s the dad - Pop Pie. Pie Pie and his twin brother Pot Pie are Pop Pie’s kids.
As a small child, I dreamt up the word “bankonk”, as a synonym for “horse”. I’m no doubt biased, but think it rather expressive.
In situations like this, who can know for sure? I gather that J.R.R. Tolkien, in respect of his best-known-and-loved created fictional species, genuinely believed that the word “hobbit” was of his dreaming-up. He wrote that at some time in the mid-1930s, when he was invigilating an exam, there popped up into his mind from nowhere – the sentence “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit”.
I’ve discovered in recent times that a scholarly work was published in the UK in the 1890s, comprehensively listing the names in folklore from various parts of England, applied to a great variety of legendary beings, often supernatural: one such, was “hobbit”. I’d hate to imagine that the borderline-saintly JRRT stated “to all and sundry” that the word was of his coining – in the knowledge that it wasn’t; and that actually, he’d cribbed it from an obscure text. I prefer to think that he had read the 1890s work long before 193*: “hobbit” was not in his conscious memory, but had been retained subconsciously, and had surfaced for him as though new, while he was supervising the exam. Either that – or, he genuinely imagined the word, independently of its existing already in folklore and meaning some kind of quasi-human entity. As with your roommate and “humongous”: while the former scenario would seem more likely than the latter, either is possible.
“Sprue” (spelt thus) is also the name of an intestinal ailment, prevalent in tropical regions. For a cite: am away from home, using an unfamiliar and not-top-of-the-range computer – linking attempt, failed – can only say, Google “sprue”.
Indeed, and that is in fact the first definition. But the “parts of plastic that hold a model together” definition is far more hilarious and fitting to the topic of this thread, while still being an actual real dictionary definition (and one that I have encountered in actual use).
Douwakai-- an untranslatable severe swear word. Originally coined by me when I was a toddler and unhappy with the way things were going. Now I include the word in a made-up language I’ve created.
Wow, a toddler who swears… I like it. But I’ll bet you didn’t make this word up. You probably remembered it from a previous lifetime when you were the ruler of a cannibalistic tribe in some equatorial country that lived on the rim of an active volcano. And when you screamed that word, it was the signal/command to your minions* to lower the current miscreant (and the evening’s entree) into the volcano until he was done to a turn and then pull him out…and well, you know…
And the made-up language is actually THE language from then. I think you should visit with a linguistic anthropologist. If there is such a thing.
*Not to be confused with “minyans,” something very very different.
19 years ago after the birth of my first born when I was a breastfeeding machine - I used to say, “OK baby, other** side**…” and switch breasts. I weaned him at 18months, but long before that when he wanted some milk, he would say, “mama, sigh pee.”
Ha! Yes! Thank you. I knew “poont” looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where. The irrepressibly vulgar Flashy, of course!
Er, slight nitpick - it’s Fraser.
more:
increpid–bold and daring, but pretty worn out
Ahhrrigan–a possibly fictitious west coast state settled by pirates
bankorage–a safe place to invest one’s money
crustagean–a foul-tempered old man
white snort coat–sure sign of a clumsy cocaine user
desistium–mineral usually found with cesium (cease and desist. Get it? ohh, well.)
orgasmerado–I don’t have a meaning yet for this word, but it sounds like it has many intriguing possibilities. See what you come up with.
When I was about 14 or 15, my parents could not keep me in clothes that fit, since I was growing so fast.
One evening as my family was sitting down for supper, my mother remarked that it was time to buy me some new shirts and pointed to my belly. I looked down and saw my stomach showing between the gaps between the buttons on my shirt. “I have gaposis!” I exclaimed.
When I started playing serious Scrabble ™, I got my first OSPD (Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) and started browsing to see what new and weird words I could find. It turns out that “gaposis” refers to the gaps between buttons on a too-small shirt.
Upscalator–a mechanical device to get one from the first to the second floor. There is a name for a device that brings one back down. can you guess what it is?
Descendavater? Nnnooo… but thanks, anyway.