A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 897

The other day I met an old friend whom I hadn’t seen for two years and she said: My goodness you have de-aged! Meaning I look younger than I did earlier. That is such a flattering word it should be taken up in the English language.
-Agnes Stieda, Victoria, Canada (agnesvstieda gmail.com)

Nose wax: It was coined by one of my daughters (Charlotte) when she was very young. Probably don’t need a definition of this one, derived from ear wax. Boylie: As in “I think pink is girlie, I like boylie things.” (another daughter, Jemma)
-Graeme Ramsay, Auckland, New Zealand (support jpartner.co.nz)

To unvite: I regularly got unvited to my mother’s home -- she would invite me and my husband and children for a holiday, but then unvite us if she got an invitation to go somewhere.
-Julye Berry, Northbrook, Illinois (e1phaba hotmail.com)

Coldostrum: the cold water that comes out of the shower head before the hot comes.
-Elizabeth Block, Toronto, Canada (elizabethblock netzero.net)

Pythagorrhea: Out of control corner cutting. This one came to me viewing a snow covered parking lot where the tire tracks revealed that hardly anyone was using the designated lanes, but cutting diagonally across the parking spaces; but it pops everywhere.
-Matthew Mattingly, Amherst, Massachusetts (mdmattin1 gmail.com)

Godincidence: No coincidence, but cause by God.
-Donald Drysdale, Siguatepeque, Honduras (donald.d.drysdale gmail.com)

Quinstruction: An instruction thinly disguised as a question and to be able to detect this is important for the sake of a happy marriage! For example, “Is that the doorbell?” (Please open the front door), “Does the dog look restless to you?” (Please walk the dog), etc.
-Roger Schofield, Aberdeen, UK (dodge.27 icloud.com)

I recently coined the word Brexidiot to describe a new political class in the UK -- those who unthinkingly and loyally support Brexit, who remain impervious to evidence, unconcerned with the real implications, and who immediately call those who disagree “traitors” and “enemies of the people”. I’ve been pleased to see the word in wider use, but I wish I’d never had cause to think it up.
-Oscar Franklin, London, UK (oscar.franklin actionaid.org)

Chooseday for election day in the United States, where it’s always on a Tuesday.
-David Policansky, Nantucket, Massachusetts (davidpolicansky gmail.com)

When I was a teenager, English being my second language, I was looking for the word “suspicious” but all I could remember was “susp”, so I inadvertently coined “suspectful” and started using it. It never elicited a comment until many years later and I was extremely surprised, even shocked, when a smiling friend said that he would put the word in his “Dom’s Dictionary”, that is, because it didn’t exist.
-Dominique Mellinger, Gorze, France (dominiquemellinger yahoo.co.uk)

Twiddling one’s thumbs doesn’t sound very grand so I coined vertopollexitation from Latin vertere, to turn and pollex, the thumb.
-Galen Ives, Sheffield, UK (galen.ives priority-research.com)

Boris: To Boris a dog is to take its collar off. Thus Kolarov. A Russian sounding name, ie Boris Kolarov. Thence to Boris. “Has the dog been Borissed?”
-Jac Trudi, Adelaide, Australia (jac.d48 bigpond.com)

I have coined utilitree which is a tree trimmed to accommodate power lines. They often have a U shape.
-Herbert W. Kelly, Huntley, Illinois (hwk123 comcast.net)

Spencer Falls

Photo: Beth Tuttle

Snaux: Artificial snow used in crafting and decorative displays. A combination of faux + snow.
I certainly use a lot of snaux in my annual elfish (Elf B) assistance with The Greatest Dickens Christmas Village In The Universe, a creative display project I’ve worked on with a friend, in Washington DC. The picture is just one small corner of Spencer Falls. Backdrop art by Annie Compton.
-Beth Tuttle, St. Louis, Missouri (macbef swbell.net)

Sadly, I don’t have him any more, but for almost eight years we had a son-in-sin, and we were in-sins to our daughter’s boy friend. They lived together without being married which we did not mind at all, but I liked the old fashioned idea of living in sin that made us come up with this word.
-Christl Mageras, White Plains, New York (cmageras gmail.com)

I am a touring country, blues, and folk musician and I met my partner, Sue, at the library where she worked for nine years. I say that I don’t really need to go to Google because I can go to Soogle. -Billy Kemp, Nashville, Tennessee (lifesaverbridge gmail.com)

Stockenfreude: That satisfied, smug feeling you get when you sell a stock and its price falls precipitously right after you’ve gotten out.
-Michael Shpizner, San Francisco, California (mjshpiz gmail.com)

Fairly early in our marriage my wife Nanette and I coined the word perceptuous, as an ironic form of the word perceptive. “I see you figured out what we are having for dinner tonight. How perceptuous of you.”
-Fran McHugh, Sun City West, Arizona (mcqz icloud.com)

Stuccat: Stuck with a cat on my lap (Particularly used when one has a cat who doesn’t grant such favours lightly).
Usage: Sorry I can’t help with the shopping (washing, table, etc.). I’m stuccat.
Family word, I think coined by our elder daughter, Susannah.
-Jenny Gill, Cape Town, South Africa (jennygill1 gmail.com)

Trimp: a very large self-aggrandizing person who is actually an ignorant imp, who trips up himself whenever he speaks his outrageous lies.
-Gloria Bertonis, Levittown, Pennsylvania (stoneagedivas comcast.net)

My husband and I are gleefully curious about why things are and how they work. When we’re at the edge of our knowledge and experience, or someone asks us a how/why question that stumps us, one of us says it’s tobefoe, (i.e., to be found out). This reminds us all not to over-speculate. We work on tobefoes the way crossword puzzlers mull over difficult clues, and it’s always satisfying to resolve them, even years later. We coined this decades ago, but I think tobefoe is especially useful in an era where we so badly need to value well-supported statements over baseless assertions.
-Phyllis Morrow, Fairbanks, Alaska (pmorrow alaska.edu)

Years ago, when I was a young teacher, students in my 9th grade English class were working on writing. One girl in the front row raised her hand and asked, “Mr. Agor, how do you spell garful?”
I didn’t want to appear ignorant, but I reluctantly had to confess:
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before.”
“I know,” she said. “I just made it up. How do you spell it?”
-Stewart Agor, Webster, New York (sbagor rochester.rr.com)

When my daughter was a child, she would refer to something that had happened before as yestertime.
-Ida Reichardt, Winnipeg, Canada (idare383 gmail.com)

Gatheration: A family gathering of many generations.
I said this word to my family when I was a child. So this word is about 48 years old.
-Jean De Rego, Vancouver, Washington (jad4pots yahoo.com)

Incalculacy: Without any understanding of calculus. Inspired by an extremely well-written book many years ago (1998) by John Allen Paulos.
-Bob Rietz, Asheville, North Carolina (dbactuary hotmail.com)

To height: to measure someone’s height.
In my work, I often measure clients for their height and weight. I typically tell the client to take off their shoes and we’ll get them heighted and weighed.
-Doug Frith, Pickering, Canada (dougfrith rogers.com)

I have been a professional book editor for some thirty years. When I came across an error in a manuscript that involved a typographical error, wrong word choice, incorrect juxtaposition, purple prose, or other mistake that gave me a chuckle or illustrated a point, I saved it and called it a manuslip. When I wrote Write In Style, traditionally published in 2004 and updated, expanded, and released as a self-published book in 2015, I included many manuslips to lighten the material, make a point, and give readers a chuckle. I still report manuslips in my monthly newsletter for writers, The Writers Network News.
manuslip: A slip in grammar, punctuation, or other error in a manuscript that results in humor; a manuscript blooper.
-Bobbie Christmas, Woodstock, Georgia (bzebra aol.com)

Levality: The quality of being level.
“Levalness” just doesn’t sound right. I coined it while helping my brother build his log cabin back in the mid 80s. Usage: Check the levality of that last beam we placed; it looks a bit askew.
-Dan Folmar, West Chester, Pennsylvania (djfolmar yahoo.com)

I coined the word unknowance as a somewhat less derogatory synonym for ignorance, a blend of ignorance and unknowing. One could be highly educated and generally very astute, yet would be offended by being called ignorant for being unaware of certain knowledge. For example, “He was thrown into a situation where his unknowance gave him no chance for success.” I was somewhat precocious as a child. Later though, as an adult, I lapsed into a long and comfortable state of cociousness. Thankfully, this lasted for most of college teaching career. Now that I’ve retired, and finally have the time and urge to work on my memoir, I’m increasingly distressed by my definite lack of postcociousness.
-Russell Lott, Hattiesburg, Mississippi (russellwlott comcast.net)

Washdog: A variant of the word watchdog, a washdog is an organization that claims to be independent and produce reliable results, when the truth is that the results can be relied on only to benefit whoever is paying the bills. An example from recent history is the credit rating agencies who gave high quality ratings to junk mortgage bonds. They usually have high-minded sounding names and lots of people with lots of letters after their name on staff.
-Jay Florey, Olympia, Washington (jfflorey integra.net)

I’ve used the term birthmas present to describe a single gift for someone whose birthday falls on or very near Christmas. My birthday is in June at the opposite end of the calendar but I’ve always held the view that there are two events deserving of a gift for the unfortunate person whose birthday falls on December 24 or 25.
-Russell Rolfe, Santa Cruz, California (rrolfe pacbell.net)

Friends and I were being seated for dinner and as we walked through the restaurant, each of us looked with interest at what others were eating. My Australian friend commented, “There really should be a word for what we’re doing.” After a few minutes of brainstorming, he came up with cuisinosity, which seemed perfect!
-Lisa Leff, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (lsgleff aol.com)

Sylvanshine

Photo: Alistair Fraser

In 1994, I wrote a scientific paper,
The Sylvanshine: retroreflection in dew-covered trees. Applied Optics., 33, 21, 4539-4547,
which used a word I had just coined for an obscure natural optical phenomenon. The paper showed and explained how a very few species of dew-covered trees in the summer could appear in retroreflection as if snow-covered in the winter moonlight. It is a beautiful sight.
In 1994, the American Dialect Society chose sylvanshine as the most beautiful word of the year -- thus, neatly complimenting the beauty of the phenomenon. (Apparently, this was the only time the Dialect Society had designated a beautiful word of the year.)
Since then, the word has crept into some dictionaries and Wikipedia. Strangely, it also was adopted as the name of a rock band and a racehorse. This has been an unexpected result for a technical term coined for an obscure optical phenomenon, particularly as the word lacks societal implications and so cannot be used to comment on human behaviour.
-Alistair Fraser, Kootenay Lake, Canada (alistair fraser.cc)

Facho: I did not coin this, Alice Walker did; I read this in Harper’s years ago. It describes a woman who outruns, outswims her male counterparts and ends with something like “In the morning, she turned the bacon with her fingers.” Deliciously funny.
-Jennifer Barber, Duncan, Canada (jbarber8 telus.net)