Have you ever been looking for just the right word, only to realize it doesn't exist in the English language? The early 20th century humorist Gelett Burgess created so many words he published his own dictionary. Families regularly use special vocabulary to explain things like that noise Aunt Zelda makes when eating. Today, we're talking with the author Paul Dickson about words and what they reveal about the way we see the world. We're hoping you'll join us too with your own "familisms." (Rebroadcast)
Your Family Vocabulary
Even though today's show is a rebroadcast, you can still be part of the conversation. Tell us about the words your family has invented. What do they mean and when do you use them? Are they recent inventions, or have they survived multiple generations?
My father (born in 1898) was promised a pocket watch if he did not swear until he was 18 years old. Once he had the watch safely in hand he shouted "Hellideydamn!" Which ever since has been the Parker Family Swearword!
When my daughter was young she would refer to us as her "Chuthers".
After some confusion we came to understand that she she had heard the phrase "love each other" and heard "love our chuthers". We all started using chuthers and when my brother, who lives far away and has kids much older than ours, heard us he said that his daughter came up with the same phrase and it was their family word, too.
My father was unable to speak loudly, which made him difficult to hear in crowded rooms. A friend of mine named Carlos, in conversation with my dad, became uncomfortable leaning too far into my dad's personal space and tired of saying "Come again?", so he eventually began simply nodding and saying "Uh huh" in reply to whatever murmur he failed to hear. In my family today if someone clearly has not heard or understood you but shakes their head anyway, you've been "Carlos-ed".
Employment is also a great place to get new words. Like "hard flash" there are lots of great words in different occupations and industries. "Grazing" is when a grocery store employee picks up and eats a grape or something from an open container. It's a great image. Once I heard a person state how "flustrated" he was about something. I thought it was great and knew exactly what he meant.
My sister, when about 7, after laughing long and hard for some time and weary from it said "Now I'm weak and stupid." A phrase which we now have used for over 20 years.
The email from the listener with the Bolivian family word reminded me of a student from Southern Utah I had several years ago. He offered "kweechup" as a family word used as a general interjection, much like "darn" or "shoot". I had the sad duty to inform him that it is a bona fide Paiute word and means "sh*#". He was a bit embarrassed.
When someone backs down from an argument in an dire way it's "Stepacide".
In college, a friend of ours referred to an attractive woman as a "Beaubock" and if she was studying Art or Art History she was an "Artbock". Because "Bock!" is what a little bird says.
A couple of submissions: Hawnyawk (sp?) Our family called someone thought to be anxiously engaged in an ill-advised cause a "hawnyawk," i.e., the wildly unsuccessful attempt to seed the stingy clouds over Sevier County in the 1960s was due to those hawnyawks on the county commission.
I've never been able to find the word, even in the great big dictionary in the D-News newsroom.
Another: My father, who was pretty much a horse whisperer, called an animal apparently beyond his influence a "clabberhead." Clabber, I believe, is some kind of residue or catalyst in making various dairy products. But being kind of a neohawnyawk myself, I wouldn't swear to it.
I learned the word honyok from my grandfather and mother - and became curious about it not long ago. It was used it as a generic pejorative in my Southern Indiana language. So I was really surprised to learn that some theories believe it to be originally be specific to people of Hungarian or Slavic origin.
We had a friend in college who would regularly interrupt on-going conversation to drone on about something totally unrelated. My other friends and I began referring to such behavior – whether from him or others – by his last name, Bainard. We’d call people out for doing this. "That was a total Bainard," became a regular joke. Years later, another friend who did not go to college with us but who spent a lot of time with my college friends and I accused one of us of committing a "Barnyard." After recovering from a fit of laughter, we discovered that this is what she thought we’d been saying all along. "Barnyard" is now the term used among our friends for the attempted hijacking of conversational subject matter.
When I was young my siblings and I used to eat small green buds we would pick of a particular weed that grew in our neighborhood. We called these round buds "cheesies." I've been surprised as I left the town I grew up in and moved to other cities to find that other kids eat these buds and that they, too call them "cheesies."
My grandsons are the originators of these words, jinormous for something really big, and tweakazoid for someone amped up on mountain dew. An old word we used as kids on family trips was hysterical markers for historical markers. When we would see them along the road we would stop and read them, and laugh, well, hysterically. Thanks
09/12/2007 1:49:11 PM
