The define me thread reminded me that I had thought of posting this before. This is for your own personally invented vocabulary that you use regularly. For me, it's schlage.

Schlage - noun, pron. shl - age (as the -age in camouflage) - - burdensome material of dubious value.

First coined while working in a warehouse. A friend and I were tasked with moving a couple hundred cartons from one side of the building to the other, without the use of a forklift. Each box was labeled only "SCHLAGE" (as it turned out, they were boxes of hardened steel padlocks). They were very heavy, and a pain in the ass to lug around. Hence, "schlage" came into use.

It's a versatile word, being perfectly applicable in a variety of situations:

Her demands for attention were just so much emotional schlage.

"I've got a trunk-full of schlage I need to drop off at the dump."

Harry refused to travel with his laptop and printer, as he argued that on the typical business trip they were little better than schlage.

Gary Hart's political career got all schlaged up with allegations of sexual misconduct.

Not so much real made-up words (or neologisms (which always sounds more like Keanu-sperm than anything else) if we're being technical), but when Cassie (my eldest) was 2 she made up words for things she didn't know the names for:

'goingstairs' = escalator
'aeroplanetrain' = Sydney monorail

thats soooo cuuteee

*harrisonbergeron'd - waylaid by some pain or ailment. from Vonnegut's short story Harrison Bergeron.

dude, i'd love to go but this headache has me totally harrisonbergeron'd right now.

*scrumpf - 1) mung. 2) sexual matter such as sweat or slime.

*ya-ba - 1) a triumphant, exclamatory sentiment. ya-ba! 2) female genetilia.

Schmag (or schmagle - I know it sounds like Gollum) - belly button lint, lint on your shirt or any undesired spot or stain.

Snexy - sexy

I have more I just can't think of them at the moment.

the sticky shit - cool stuff. tha bomb.

We're totally into renaming things where I work. Very few verbs though, although we have been know to rework people's names into a verb on occasion. As in, "You really Mr. Burns'd that poor bastard!", for example.

Some popular renames:
Bread, Bath & Beyond (Beyond Bread restaurant)
Asbestos (Los Betos restaurant)
Forest Circus (Forest Service)
Circle J (Trader Joe's--the *ultimate* Circle K)
Middle-aged Dew (Diet Mountain Dew)
Mountain Grue (any offbrand caffinated Mountain Dew knockoff)

I shall have to post these as I think of them, I have a ton.

Does anyone know if I made up the term 'dither off'? I've been using it so long I can't remember. It was one of those words that made itself up. Just seemed the proper thing to call it. It may have been some kind of subconscious memory though. You know? When you think you've made something up and it turns out you actually heard it once and promptly forgot about it.

Most my made up words are so common to me now I've forgotten they're made up. I'll make a list and post again later.

I swear I made up this word spontaneously in a high school philosophy class debate - others seem to have now put it to some use (i.e. the 73 google results) but I came up with it all on my own those years ago. I even owned the domain name for a period...

speciescentric

Chuthers.

My kid sister didn't understand the grammatical concept of 'each other'. To her it was "We love our chuthers."

pop porn - those unending popups of porn sites when you fat finger a url at work.
idiotoxic - ideas that are so stupid they can kill you.

I know i have more, but am drawing a blank.

Eggggsellent, my pretties. Keep 'em coming.

Ya-ba, chuthers, idiotoxic, all genius.

Here ya go split, overdose..
Click Me If You Dare!

What are you Lithos, the thread-spoiler? Does linking to someone else's work make you special? You didn't have anything of your own to contribute , so you dump an ass-load of someone else's?

quote:

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Originally posted by martin:
What are you Lithos, the thread-spoiler? Does linking to someone else's work make you special? You didn't have anything of your own to contribute , so you dump an ass-load of someone else's?

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Yes, yes, and, golly-gosh dang it, yes.

To paraphrase you, martin, you didn't have anything of your own to contribute, so you spent it flaming me?

Hey martin, can't stand the internet, then stay offline. Last time I checked, about 99.99% of the links posted on this very forum were links to the work of someone else, and not of the persons who posted them. Quick, get the copyright lawyers!

How about a reverse "define me" thread?

Person A posts something (an object, situation, emotion...) for which no word currently exists in English, and persons B-Z try to come up with the most appropriate word. Person A nominates the winner, who then puts up the next suggestion.

Growing up, my best friend and I had quite a few. "Bingo-bango-boingo" was a term for coitus, still used in our frequen email communication. We deliberately misinterpreted the word "pitch", as in "pitch black", to mean "absolutely". So that a classroom where a students were taking a test was pitch quiet, and girls with platinum hair were pitch blonde.

When the band I used to be in moved from Pittsburgh to Phoenix, we came up with the term "chip" for (not necessarily native) Arizonan, because it seemed like they all had chips on their shoulders.

I've heard the term "cuffing it" used to describe the technique of muting the strings of the guitar with the side of one's right palm while playing staccato power chords. I always called it "the freight train".

Here's a contribution from the mind of Mike Watt.

edit: Oops, wanna include one that's not listed in Watt's glossary: to "Daltrey" is to strike an iconic rock-god pose on stage, and thus render oneself unintentionally ridiculous.

Excuse me if I'm stating the obvious, but as far as I know "dither off" means something like "go somewhere else", "wander off", "go nowhere in particular". Never heard it used with the other meaning.

As in e.g this.

I got no idea where its from but "crapweasle" is my personal favourite... "shiznah" as well (used when succesfully dohting another person is performed
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herj - i saw the title of this thread, and thought "i make words up all the time, but can i think of any - no, i can't". so read the pasted results of a couple of threads, got so far and left a "herj". went from there to reading "the whole blog", which i downloaded the other day, and got to the bit about narrative and making words up and breaking rules. which reminded me of "herj". herj is a place holder, a corruption of "here", which i can always use to find where i left off when reading a text; here being too obviously likely to turn up somewhere naturally, hence herj