This audio reminds me that I’ve intended to catalog the words my sister and I made up, as well as the funny words my dad came up with. I think of this often but never set it down in type. Dad’s words were an annoyance to a high school friend who wanted to be a linguist. Dad’s words annoyed him because they had no linguistic substance or derivation. “Kellups” for ketchup, for instance, made no sense to the linguist. “Shpeetal” was dad’s word for “hospital”. I think that one might have gotten a pass by the linguist, probably because he spelled it “shpital” in his mind, forming at least a resemblance to the word “hospital”. “Shpeetal” sounds like an obscenity to me now. I think these funny words are something dad brought from his East Tennessee upbringing.

Now I can’t remember dad’s other made up words, though they pass through my mind once in a while and I always think I should jot them down.

Words my sister and I made up included the infamous “No curia, bullsnitch”, which was our way of saying “No shit, Sherlock”. As of 2011 “bullsnitch” is in the Urban Dictionary, though I’ve always been skeptical of that product’s relevance as a legitimate reference source. The UD’s definition is not the same as ours was, although now that I think of it I may never have articulated bullsnitch’s supposed meaning. “No curia” means “No kidding” or something similar but I guess “bullsnitch” is a name assigned to someone who said something painfully obvious, as in the “Sherlock” from the more commonly used phrase.

We also invented a single-toothed witch who lived in the attic. I don’t remember which of us gave her the name but she was called “The Mish Mosh,” a name that still kind of scares me a little bit even today. Something about the use of the letter M for the first letters of both words evokes an evil precision, a melodious sounding M to introduce words that still resonate with evil in my mind all these decades later.

In my nightmares she would open the door of the attic from inside and stick her head out, announcing with an evil smile “I am the Mish Mosh”. She had a certain gentleness about her but really she was evil. Her single tooth extended halfway down her chest, a deformity of sorts which contributed to her downfall. She looked down quickly for some reason and stabbed herself to death as the tooth tore into her chest. That’s a disgusting way to go but at least she was gone from our lives. Not that she was every really there, of course.

Today “Mish Mosh” is the name of a restaurant in Stamford, CT (never been there) and it is the name of a Jewish word game (never played it). I don’t know if the name had any usage in the 1970s, when we thought of it, but even if it did I don’t think we would have encountered the name anywhere. We thought of it all by ourselves.

In high school and college some friends and I invented words for things that we didn’t know had names or didn’t think had names. “Twack” was coined by my freshman year roommate, and defined as “a pushy vegetarian.” There were a number of those at our college, or so it seemed. The words concocted by my high school friends were more for disgusting things, or slightly gross. A “plub” was piece of shit that would not flush, better known as a floater. To “fedge” was to derive pleasure from rubbing your anus on a doorknob. “Crake” was defined as a shit stain in your underpants, a meaning which might offend birdwatchers with a fondness for the Corn Crake bird. Crake is also the name of a character in a Margaret Atwood novel, one who probably would not benefit from being compared to a smear of fœces.

To “gake” was to prance naked about the house. I don’t remember why but “prance” was critical to the word’s meaning. “Clud” had something to do with shit, I think, though I don’t remember the meaning we gave it. I left a cryptic message in my “Senior Will,” where everyone in the graduating class got to leave something to somebody else. I guess it was an old tradition, and as editor of the paper that year you’d think I had a better grasp of why the senior wills were even a thing. One particular friend and I made up a lot of these words. To him in my senior will I left a gallon of crake dotted with plubs in clud. I think “clud” was some kind of stinking, steaming pile of shit that could not flush, such as the collected turds of dozens of people I once found in a portable toilet at Prospect Park. That was nasty but no, I’m not going to look for the picture I got of it.