Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Ingst and Other Nonsense Words

If you have hung around in Cyber-Land very long, you've probably had to enter a word verification when you've posted a comment or entered information on a website. You are shown made-up words or squiggly letters and have to key them in as they appear in order to post. This helps keep electronic spammers at bay, but even more usefully, it provides entertainment for word lovers who can then play nonsensically with the nonsense words generated by the word verification programs.

When word lovers are hopped up on heavy-duty cold medicine and desperately trying to distract themselves from a flaming sore throat, the fun is intensified, as you will see if you keep reading.

I do not recommend that you keep reading. Which pretty much guarantees that you will, because you have an insatiable curiosity to see the train wreck and be grateful that it isn't you.

I recently had to enter the nonsense word ingst and decided that ingst is really just a blending of ink and angst, and it’s what writers get when confronted with a blank page that they must fill with writing. Ingst. I’m experiencing ingst today. Virtual ingst, since of course I’m not using ink on paper but typing letters into a computer. But it gave me an idea for this week’s essay.

Note that I said an idea, not a good idea.

Since I truly feel I haven’t given you enough evidence that I’m obsessive compulsive, let's hammer the last nail in that coffin by telling you that I collect these nonsense words. In fact, I have a business-size envelope overflowing with index cards on which I have jotted the best nonsense words I’ve encountered.

I’ve even begun to categorize them under three general types.

1. Nonsense words that should be in the English language but, sadly, are not. Most of these are supremely easy to spot and require very little cleverness to define.

unduo (verb: to divorce, break up. They decided to unduo after he left the toilet seat up one too many times.)

relike (verb: the reverse of unduo. She reliked him after he bought a house with his and her bathrooms.)

repint (verb: to refill a beer glass. "Repint me," George said.)

nongynal (adjective: a medical appointment not pertaining to women’s issues. I need a nongynal appointment for my cold.)

unsin (verb: to make right a wrong. Most sins cannot be unsinned.)

repie (verb: to get another piece of pie…duh)

restic (adjective: the state of being both restful and rustic. Our stay in the cabin was restic.)

blogied (verb, past participle: when your mom shares embarrassingly funny things about you on her blog, you’ve been blogied)

gawdly (adverb: same as godly, but spoken in rural Alabama. That there man is a gawdly redneck.)

homater (noun: a promiscuous tomato. That's one skanky homater!)

spousion (noun: what happens when your spouse explodes in your face. Leaving the toilet seat up guarantees a spousion.)

grome (noun: a grown-up human with an unfortunate resemblance to a gnome. That grome really should not post his picture on eHarmony.)

luveywu (noun: a sickeningly sweet term of endearment. Come here, luveywu, and give me a kissy-wissy!)

swoog (verb: what I did when I saw the gelatin-womb cake on Cake Wrecks)

glerc (noun: the sound I made when I swooged. My glerc made the dog swoog in sympathy.)

smalloid (noun: new term for Pluto since it’s no longer a planet and I feel sorry for it.)

Please note that if I were distressingly obsessive compulsive, these words would be listed in alphabetical order. They are not, and it was not even a little hard for me to leave them that way; therefore I am not mentally ill. Just weird.

2. Nonsense words that are fun to say out loud but for which I’m not clever enough to invent definitions.

ingly
mooloot
togyrot
clorp
tarsp
fiaboo
ploble
quatipsi
cousious
dedredi
phoduc
cherb

3. Nonsense words that are not particularly fun to say but for which I’m still not clever enough to invent definitions.

dignied
hyperin
wationy
spepias
subclef
chramps
prolu
deretoph
blantel

Since I am not clever enough to invent definitions, I thought I’d use the nonsense words in a poem, which is only a poem because it’s broken into three stanza of five lines each and not for any other reason. Remember, this idea came to me after a massive dose of cold medicine, which does amazing things to my creativity, and not necessarily good amazing things.

The Fiaboo

The spepias deretoph
Laid a blantel of cherb
Over the ploble dedredi,
Whose sounds of prolu
Were dreadful to hear.

The spepias deretoph
Felt bad for his deed,
And sang, subclef,
A hyperin dirge
Of cousious sublime.

The dignied clorp
Made the fiaboo right
By removing the dedredi’s blantel
And ingly whacking the deretoph
Until he shut up.

Which seems like a really good idea for me at the moment, so I’m going to pop a throat lozenge and contemplate the piles of laundry that I should have been doing instead of writing this post.

Stay well, people. Stay well.

30 comments:

  1. I HATE word verification. My biggest pet peeve is figuring out those stupid letters, and then getting a message that my comment will be visible after moderator approval...why make us jump through hoops and then screen comments anyway? I've actually gone to leave a comment on a blog, then left when I saw that it required word verification, without commenting. I hate it that much.
    However, after reading this post, I will now unconsciously be making a game out of the stupid words, which just may keep my blood pressure down. You just may have prevented my stroke. Thank you Susan!

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  2. Too funny! I am embarrassed to say that I have a steno book where I've been writing the funny ones down for quite some time, thinking that there just HAS to be something fun to do with them! lol...doesn't take much to entertain me! Thanks for the smiles!!!

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  3. HAHAHAHAHAHA! I like you even more when you're hopped up on meds. I make a game of the blogger Captcha letters by making myself use them in a sentence. If I get the word before I submit the comment, I'll post my sentence with my comment.

    And for those wondering why bother? I get like 2 comments per post, and when one of them is spam? Forget it. Just make a game out of the letters. It's WAY more fun!

    PS: subclef (music ... c'mon, you can do this one!)

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  4. Word verfication drives me crazy...but this post made me laugh. I'll now have a new appreciation for word verfication!

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  5. hahahaha - love this post. my husband walked into the room and caught me smiling as I was reading....he doesn't quite get why I found it so funny, but that's okay!

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  6. Leslie, I am a musical idiot and know only enough to get that clef is a musical term. Can't one of you more musically educated individuals do something with it?

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  7. Oh my goodness *wiping tears from my eyes* That was too funny, loved it! Thank you :)

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  8. http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/regent/827/sniglets.html

    And...

    I was given this book by one of my cousins when I was a kid.

    Heard of it?

    http://www.amazon.com/Sniglets-Sniglit-Doesnt-Appear-Dictionary/dp/0020125305

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  9. mooloot noun The prized byproduct of cows. ie cow piles/manure
    Oh my gosh. I have to stop reading now. Or else I'll be inventing definitions all night.

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  10. Susan, your blog ALWAYS puts a silly grin on my face! I just love your nice little twisted way of looking at the world. I truely look forward to your posts. A little off subject - have you ever watched the TV show "The Middle" (Wed. 8pm on ABC) The youngest son Brick is fascinated with words. Tonight he was truely amazed at the simple complexity of Valentine candy hearts ie... Love Ya and Be Mine! This post would have put him into orbit! LOL God bless you for sharing you thoughts even with the cold meds!

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  11. I like you even more when you're high on cold meds, he he he. Myself, I try and remember the good ones and those that are relevant but in my advanced dotage that's a bad idea, yes! I forget!
    Thank you for brightening my day and I hope you feel better soon:0) xx

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  12. He he, thanks for making my day, hope you feel better soon.

    Hugs
    Maarit

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  13. ROFL! I'm right there in the weird category with you Susan as the poem made perfect sense to me and I'm not even on cold meds!! Feel better soon!

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  14. AWESOME!!! Well done, Susan! Keep taking those meds... Hope you feel better soon (well, maybe not...).

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  15. OMG! I'm sitting here cracking up, love your definitions! I hope you feel better soon.

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  16. Your poem sounds like it's straight out of "Alice in Wonderland" or "Through the Looking Glass". Love it and all your definitions.

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  17. oh my goodness!!
    you are too awesome!
    thanks for all your cleverness. gosh when i get sick, i just go to bed and sleep. you manage to think creative thoughts and write poetry.
    too, too, too fun!!
    hope you are feeing better.
    marty ferraro

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  18. OK, someone took mooloot...so I'll take tarsp. It's what you put over the tent after a six pack of beer. Thanks for the laughs!

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  19. Thank you Susan - that was such fun!! I love words and it's nice to see someone else has fun with these silly words too! I find it hard to believe you keep them, define them - perhaps you use them too!!

    How much medication did you take today? :))

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  20. Ha ha ha. Word nerds unite! I do the same sorts of silly things. Great fun. Have another shot of cold medicine.

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  21. From one word nerd to another: I LOVE THIS POST!

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  22. Oh a whole roomful of word nerds. Be still my beating heart. I laughed until I almost peed my pants, which would have left me dignied (denied my dignity)

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  23. Love, love, love this post! So good to know I am not alone in my word nerdness. Nerdhood? nerdism? Quatipsi: the high achieved from qualudes. Or cold medicine, perhaps. After enjoying this post, I went to work, where a client informed me that her husband had misconscrewed her words. What a banner day! Feel better.

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  24. Just reading all your wonderful comments is making me feel better! Thanks so much!

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  25. I am giggling like a fool right now!! Thanks for the drug induced giggle!!

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  26. Susan that was hilarious! Hope you continue feeling better. I love your humor. Whether you are on meds or not. BTW my favorite sniglet is cinemuck- you know that stuff your shoes stick to on the theater floor.
    My other favorite -ignisecond- doesn't make as much sense as it used to. It's that period of time between slamming the locked door and realizing the keys are in the ignition.

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  27. I do hold you responsible for planting this idea in my head of trying to make sense of the nonsense that is word verification.
    I do also like what you have done.
    And I did actually swoog when I saw the same gelatin baby on Cake Wrecks.

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  28. I'll have some of that medication too please!!!

    Feel better soon

    Kathyk

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Thanks so much for taking time to comment!