Made Up Words – 6 People Who Just Made Words Up To Sound Cooler.

Many of us have been in a situation where we have heard someone use a word the we have never come across. In these situations, most of us just nod and agree with what the speaker is saying rather than admit we dropped out of high school to become a professional pool player after seeing the movie “The Color of Money” back in the 80s and we don’t know the meaning of most college level words.

Photo: Wikipedia

The truth however, is that people make up and misuse new words all the time, and more often than not, you are better off asking the speaker what the word means or what they mean when they use the word. This will improve communication between both of you and help create a deeper understanding.

(Even if that understanding is that you understand that they are a pedantic jackass.)

We at Daft Gadgets have a fun way of dealing with people who use words like that we don’t understand. When we hear a word we don’t know, we use their sentence back on them in disagreement with new made up word that we give meaning to once we know how to prove them wrong.

For example. If we ask a politician if we should raise taxes and he says that it would be “Specious” to do so, we would argue that no doing so could be “castroclarifying”, and then gradually work out what he meant by “specious” during his rebuttal.

Below are a list of 6 People who are known for pulling common words and phrases from places so mysterious, they were previously known only to proctologists.

1. Factoid – Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer. Photo: Wikipedia

Speaking of “Made up Words”, while writing Marilyn Monroe’s biography Mailer, attempted to find a word for the innuendo and deceptive phrase allusions used by celebrity magazines to create gossip and sell subscriptions. Essentially he need a word for the “Made up Facts” that people believe because they read them in news print. The word he chose was “Factoid”, meaning “sounds like a fact”

This definition continued until CNN started using “factoid” to mean “Its a little known fact” which was closer to something Cliff Claven would say, giving the term slightly more credibility.

Cliff Clavin. photo: Wikpedia.

“Its a little known fact that…….that cows were domesticated in Mesopotamia and were also used in China as guard animals for the forbidden city” Quote: Cliff Clavin

2. Agnostic – Thomas Huxley

When he wasn’t describing a futuristic hell like society that believed happiness could be found in the perfect pharmaceutical pill, Thomas Huxley was being criticized for not believing in any of the one true gods everyone else believed in. The term for this was Atheist.

Disliking the stigma of being an atheist or the stigmata of a true believer, Huxley created a word for people who don’t know things for sure. He named it, “Agnostic” the a prefix meaning “without” and “Gnostic” (derived from the Greek Gnostos) meaning “knowable”

The term nowadays is generally used for non religious spiritual people who believe in “something” but don’t know what it is, so to speak. The term was coined in the 1960s, but it is uncertain whether or not Huxley was stoned when he created the word.

We say probably “yes.”

3. Grok – Robert a Heinlein

The Word Grok was coined by Robert A Heinlein in his novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” The word describes having the ultimate knowledge of something’s true being (like in Star Trek when a Shape shifter becomes something, or a Trill is merged symbiotically with host.)

Although not a popular word, it is sometimes used by modern speakers to express a deep understanding of a concept, opinion, or philosophy. Originally however, the word “Grok” was meant to represent everything in science, religion, and philosophy, but that we stupid humans are unable to understand since it is like explaining colors to a blind man.

At least that’s what we think it means, assuming we grokked it correctly.

4. Gobbledygook – Maury Maverick

To U.S Congressman Maury Maverick, (Grandson of the Famous “Sam” Maverick, were the term “Maverick” meaning independently minded comes from) The world of politics was filled with a bunch of gobbling bombastic turkey’s, all strutting around and posturing while taking no action or speaking any meaning.

Photo Wikipdia

Above Photo” Maverick’s interpretation of a politician.

The term Gobbledygook was the name he gave to people (particularly politicians) who were purposely vague and esoteric in their speeches.

5. “Yes Man” – Tad Dorgan

The American cartoonist Tad Dorgan created a comic book about an editor and his apple polishing sycophants. The comics name was “Giving the First Edition the Once Over” and written above the name of each assistant to the editor the words “Yes Man” appeared. Since then, the word yes man has been elaborated to refer to any subordinate in business, sports, or politics who agrees with the boss no matter how wrong he or she may be.

Dorgan is actually credited with a few other phrases you may have heard of as well, including:

• “The Cat’s Meow,”
• “Dumbell,”
• “For Crying Out Loud,”
• “Hard-boiled,” and oddly enough
• “Yes, we have no bananas”….?

6. “Fardels” William Shakespeare

Shakespeare. Photo: Wikipedia

A great man once asked: What do fardels bear? And most of us who read that line went straight to the dictionary only to be left with the assumption that the writer just made the word up out of thin air.

The line comes from Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be, or not to be.” And although he may not have invented to word “Fardels” Shakespeare is credited for quite a few phrases still heard today.

In fact, Shakespeare is credited with at least 1,500 different words and phrases that don’t appear anywhere else before him. Assuming of course that Shakespeare wasn’t an impostor like the urban legends say

Anonymous film poster. Photo: Wikipedia

Below you will find a list of his more memorable made up words.

Puking – From “All the Worlds a Stage”

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. As, first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. “

To be fair there are more words for puking than almost any other verb, but it puking is probably one of the top 3 synonyms for vomiting. We’d like to point out that even after all these years, some Shakespeare is still considered as “slang”

Note: We at Daft Gadgets claim the rights to word: “SpewJecting” as a new word for projectile vomiting.

Eyeballs – From A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.”

Basically, Shakespeare is saying make him experience the loss of sight rather than the state of blindness. He’s clever like that.

Note: We at Daft Gadgets claim the rights to word: “NoseHoles” as obvious and redundant ways to say nostrils

Obscene – From Love’s Labours Lost,

“Then for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter
that obscene and preposterous event,”

Shakespear was a master of Scenes and probably thought “There should be a word for “bad Scene” and chose “OB” to negate the word scene since “inscene” was too close to “insane”. (He may have also had a penchant for Obstetrics)

Note: We at Daft Gadgets claim the rights to word: Obplay which refers to an entire play or lifetime of bad behavior, as opposed to just a “bad scene”

The Game is A foot – Henry IV

This is kind of like when your 80s Chrysler says “A Door is Ajar.” We know a door is a door and a foot is a foot, but like “A-Jar” a door must be closed and like a foot, the game is now moving.

Yes we know this comparison is cheesy.

Epileptic – King Lear.

“A plague upon your epileptic visage!

Like “Apoplectic” (showing signs of stroke during times extreme rage or heart attack) Epileptic has taken on a meaning of extreme gesticulations to the point of a medical condition.

Thanks to Shakespeare we now know that Julius Caesar was not cursed by the gods and merely suffered from “Epilepsy”

Note: We at Daft Gadgets claim the rights to word: “Taxokleptic” which denotes a government’s taxing and misuse of tax money that is so gelasticly dark and excessive, that it constitutes both theft and a disease. (Like a fanatical kleptomaniac)

Other wonderful words that the internet credits to Shakespeare can be seen below.

It could be successfully argued that society adapted these words into their language to subconsciously bring more drama into our lives, or that people started using them because they wanted to appear more educated than the people who had never heard them before Shakespeare made them up.

Or you could argue that we didn’t check our sources well enough and that Shakespeare wasn’t a real person anyway even if we did.

Either which way, the jury is still out on these:

academe
accused
addiction
advertising
amazement
arouse
assassination
backing
bandit
bedroom
beached
besmirch
birthplace
blanket
bloodstained
barefaced
blushing
bet
bump
buzzer
caked
cater
champion
circumstantial
cold-blooded
compromise
courtship
countless
critic
dauntless
dawn
deafening
discontent
dishearten
drugged
dwindle
equivocal
elbow
excitement
exposure
eyeball
fashionable
fixture
flawed
frugal
generous
gloomy
gossip
gnarled
grovel
green-eyed
gust
hint
hobnob
hurried
impede
impartial
invulnerable
jaded
label
lackluster
laughable
lonely
lower
luggage
lustrous
madcap
majestic
marketable
metamorphize
mimic
monumental
mountaineer
negotiate
noiseless
obsequiously
ode
olympian
outbreak panders
pedant
premeditated
radiance
rantremorseless
savagery
scuffle
secure
skim milk
submerge
summits
wagger
torture
tranquil
undress
unrealvaried
vaulting
worthless
zany