Seven Words That Aren't But Should Be

I like words. I really like words. No, I like, like words. But my favorite words aren’t even words at all, they’re illegitimate love children of other words that rubbed together a few too many times and, poof! New word!

To English scholars and semi-intelligent people, these are known as portmanteaux words. You might think of them as mash-ups of multiple words that together provide a whole new and useful level of description.

Of course, it can all go wrong.  “Irregardless” is a great example. If you are wondering why irregardless is being mentioned among a list of words that aren’t and you’ve been using it in e-mails, memos, at work in conversation, it’s time for you to know that everyone is laughing at you.

Irregardless is a bad portmanteaux because it is completely unnecessary – a mere bastardization of two perfectly good words; “irrespective” and “regardless”, neither one of which is in need of modification for the sake of improvement.

That example aside, not all portmanteaux words are the devil’s work. Some are actually quite ideal and should be added to the lexicon posthaste. Call the OED! Picket outside of Miriam Webster’s offices. Ah, hell, just add them to Wikipedia, that’s as far as most people go these days anyway.

#7 “Blentry” Let’s start slow. Since you’re getting an English lesson from this blog, we’ll assume this is the best way to start. Blentry is quite simply a blog entry.

See? It’s perfect. That’s why these words that aren’t words should be words. Because blentry. What else could a blentry be? It is perhaps the perfect and most useful of the modern portmanteaux words because, by definition it could not be anything other than what it is.

“I really liked your blentry today. It was very funny”, is what I imagine people would say to me if they ran across me on the street rather than trying to run over me.

Blentry advances the lexicon because it describes in a keenly effective way a modern thing that didn’t exist until recently. But because it pulls from simple words that everyone knows, it is immediately recognizable. It also makes something that used to require two words, blog entry, into only one, thus doubling our productivity and helping us win the war against liberty.

Thanks to David W. Towne Esq. for contributing “Blentry”

#6 “Fauxnitiative” takes the words faux (a real French word that means “fake”) and initiative to create something that every working person is familiar with; either because you’ve seen it or done it.

You know that person at work that is always talking about how busy they are but always seems to be playing free cell when you walk by their cube? They are the same ones who at every status meeting talk about all they have done to move the ball on their project when no one else has heard of the project. They are expressing fauxnitiative.

Fauxnitiative is a well-known and oft-used gambit to avoid doing any real work. It can be used in almost any environment. Like the littlest guy in a group of big guys talking smack about “beating ass” and such, when he has no intention of doing any of the hard work himself.

You can choose to call out a person’s fauxnitiative, but it may backfire because everyone already knows they are full of shit. It just makes you look petty by calling attention to it. Also, if you call someone else out for overplaying their fauxnitiative, someone could be right behind you ready to do the same to you. This is why fauxnitiative continues. It’s the proverbial Mexican standoff.

#5 “Expectable” is the result of a torrid affair between expect and acceptable. Something expectable is something that met your low expectations and not one little bit more. Expectable is like every meal ever served at Applebee’s. Expectable is every Michael Bay film or first dates with people who responded to your personal ad on Craigslist. You aren’t looking for much, but at least you get it.

“Hey, how are those Buffalo ranch boneless broasted chicken tips?”

“I don’t know. Fine I guess…  they’re expectable.”

Thanks to Gregory B. Gruley for contributing Expectable

#4 “Poordom” is the sublime partnership of poor and boredom. Poordom is the never-ending drudgery of being poor.

“He sat under the leak in his roof, contemplating his poordom.”

“While she wanted to join her friends at the bar, she couldn’t afford the cover charge on account of her poordom.”

You get it.

The Grapes of Wrath may have been worth reading if Steinbeck had words like poordom in his quiver to describe the zeitgeist of dustbowl America during the depression. Like all good portmanteaux words, it conveys precision and depth of meaning.

#3 “Snuzzle” might trip up some people. It’s the confluence of snot and muzzle. It is basically the stuff pet owners have to chisel off their windows at home and in the car; or instead learn to live with it and just pretend that solidified dog snot isn’t as gross as kissing your sister.

Snuzzle is mostly impervious to cleaning products as it sort of reconstitutes into a gelatinous ooze when liquid is applied. It’s best to just replace your window.

No one knows how snuzzle becomes so impossible to clean. It must be that magic combination of saliva, Beggin’ Strips and ass matter that creates some impervious ionic bond at the molecular level.

Though snuzzle is gross, it’s common. And being common makes it somewhat less disturbing, unlike the next example, which while common is creepy by definition.

#2 “Cryptcreeper” is a play on the famous “Crypt Keeper”, the animatronic host of Tales from the Crypt, an old Friday night spook show on HBO before HBO showed only boob related material after the dinner hour.

A cryptcreeper is a person way too old to be in a particular bar, trying to pick up a person from a younger demographic.

Maybe it’s the Members Only jacket, or the just past its prime toupee. Perhaps the 10 year old Bimmer that looks sorta nice in the dark of the bar parking lot, until you see the wire coat hanger holding up the muffler and the bald, mismatched tires.  Or maybe it’s the carefully studied application of popular slangs that jumped the shark a couple months ago.

A Cryptcreeper is flashing the cash to make up for the fact that he looks like an undercover operative sent by your parents to make sure you were acting like a young lady or young gentleman.

Cryptcreepers are always men, because a female cryptcreeper would be known as a cougar. And that’s almost always hot, because men are pigs and last call is coming faster than a junior on prom night.

#1 “Apostraphal” should be a word because it not only conforms to the general guidelines of being made of real words, descriptive of what it is and easy to understand, it also contributes to the defeat of one of modern man’s greatest scourges; inappropriate use of apostrophes.

It is the happy marriage of apostrophe, that little tick that is used to denote possession, contractions and all sorts of things, and apocryphal, something generally passed along as a part of the story but not considered true or verifiable.

If you are wondering why apostrophes isn’t spelled apostrophe’s, you are part of the problem. Actually, you are the problem.

These days, printed signs hanging outside of commercial buildings, presumably produced by professional corporate infographic firms, are flipping English teachers and moderately intelligent society alike the big effyou by wantonly misusing this misunderstood but well-meaning and useful punctuation mark.

Look for demonstration’s of apostraphal writing everywhere on social media site’s, blog’s and tweet’s. They’re everywhere.