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.