During a recent downtime discussion at work, a co-worker asked me how many languages I actually speak. Though the answer is two (English and Gibberish), she believed that it was more because of my successful answers during daily viewings of quiz shows, my ability to pronounce certain specialized terms that pop up in our daily work, and her mistaken belief that the word ‘Frammistat’ was actually German. In reality, I have sufficient command of Spanish to get arrested, a tiny bit of semi-conversational Japanese, a very rudimentary chunk of Latin (thanks to a school-teacher grandmother) and know exactly one sentence in German. Of course, given that English absorbs words the way that I absorb quotes from ‘Real Genius,’ there are a great many foreign-sounding words and phrases that occasionally pop up in my speech patterns, as well as some entirely fabricated words and other such frammistattery.
The MS-QOTD (pronounced “ha-da-ka”) has that certain je ne sais quoi, asking: What is your favorite made-up, nonsense or place-holder word?
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It must be cluster-schmazz, because I heard Little Disaster use it correctly yesterday…
Gorram takes the cake for me. It’s something that I actually find myself using at times.
My goddaughter started using it when she was younger as a curse word substitute and never outgrew it. Just the other day she used it in a slightly heated argument with a friend and I couldn’t stop giggling.
It’s useful. It is actually derived from actual words, so it can be used in normal conversation with only minimal weird looks… Except of course from people who know where you got it, and they just smile.
I think my favourite corrupted words are douchetastic and clusterfail.
“Shabadooie” from Kamen Rider Wizard!
“Runcible”. By Edward Lear, the poet. No one knows his meaning, and he may not have either.
Drokk! That’s a funting hard question, you’ve stirred up a real skev storm. Frakk it, I’m just going to go with Grud.
In the place of any large number I am unsure of I just substitute eleventy. As in “I am so hungry I could eat like elventy billion chicken nuggets right now.”
Agga Dagga
Breakfast Club
notate
I used to use “blorg” more often, substituting it for any word just about (such as “I can’t find my blorgging pencil!” and “Hand me that blorg over there”). Sometimes it was simply used as an exclamation (“Blorg! It is great to see you!”).
It might be biased, but I’m quite fond of my friend’s use of the term “Down Ali”. It started out as the go-to phrase a close friend of mine used whenever I was being flirty, but now it has taken on a whole new meaning and can be used to describe if something or someone (though usually just females) is cute, flirty, silly or even a bit “naughty” (Such as “She’s a Down Ali”, “I saw that movie and it was very Down Ali” or “That exotic dancer has some Down Ali moves”).
Oh! Almost forgot, I use a lot of Mandalorian words and phrases. My partner even surprised me by learning how to pronounce the Mandalorian marriage vows correctlly (much better than I can, even!).
And apparently I use “Jeebus” a lot. Thank you, Homer Simpson.
“Smeg” has been a work-safe swear substitute since I was 12 and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, no matter how bad attempts to revive its source may get.