{"id":14730,"date":"2017-11-08T01:05:14","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T01:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=14730"},"modified":"2017-11-08T01:05:14","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T01:05:14","slug":"scurvy-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2017\/11\/08\/scurvy-grass.html","title":{"rendered":"Scurvy Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-14730-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/mobi\/37\/2017\/11\/171106_005_001.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/mobi\/37\/2017\/11\/171106_005_001.mp3\">https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/mobi\/37\/2017\/11\/171106_005_001.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>This audio reminds me that I&#8217;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&#8217;s words were an annoyance to a high school friend who wanted to be a linguist. Dad&#8217;s words annoyed him because they had no linguistic substance or derivation. &#8220;Kellups&#8221; for ketchup, for instance, made no sense to the linguist. &#8220;Shpeetal&#8221; was dad&#8217;s word for &#8220;hospital&#8221;. I think that one might have gotten a pass by the linguist, probably because he spelled it &#8220;shpital&#8221; in his mind, forming at least a resemblance to the word &#8220;hospital&#8221;. &#8220;Shpeetal&#8221; sounds like an obscenity to me now. I think these funny words are something dad brought from his East Tennessee upbringing.<\/p>\n<p>Now I can&#8217;t remember dad&#8217;s other made up words, though they pass through my mind once in a while and I always think I should jot them down.<\/p>\n<p>Words my sister and I made up included the infamous &#8220;No curia, bullsnitch&#8221;, which was our way of saying &#8220;No shit, Sherlock&#8221;. As of 2011 &#8220;bullsnitch&#8221; is in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=Bullsnitch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Urban Dictionary<\/a>, though I&#8217;ve always been skeptical of that product&#8217;s relevance as a legitimate reference source. The UD&#8217;s definition is not the same as ours was, although now that I think of it I may never have articulated bullsnitch&#8217;s supposed meaning. &#8220;No curia&#8221; means &#8220;No kidding&#8221; or something similar but I guess &#8220;bullsnitch&#8221; is a name assigned to someone who said something painfully obvious, as in the &#8220;Sherlock&#8221; from the more commonly used phrase.<\/p>\n<p>We also invented a single-toothed witch who lived in the attic. I don&#8217;t remember which of us gave her the name but she was called &#8220;The Mish Mosh,&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>In my nightmares she would open the door of the attic from inside and stick her head out, announcing with an evil smile &#8220;I am the Mish Mosh&#8221;. 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&#8217;s a disgusting way to go but at least she was gone from our lives. Not that she was every really there, of course.<\/p>\n<p>Today &#8220;Mish Mosh&#8221; 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&#8217;t know if the name had any usage in the 1970s, when we thought of it, but even if it did I don&#8217;t think we would have encountered the name anywhere. We thought of it all by ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>In high school and college some friends and I invented words for things that we didn&#8217;t know had names or didn&#8217;t think had names. &#8220;Twack&#8221; was coined by my freshman year roommate, and defined as &#8220;a pushy vegetarian.&#8221; 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 &#8220;plub&#8221; was piece of shit that would not flush, better known as a floater. To &#8220;fedge&#8221; was to derive pleasure from rubbing your anus on a doorknob. &#8220;Crake&#8221; 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 f\u0153ces.<\/p>\n<p>To &#8220;gake&#8221; was to prance naked about the house. I don&#8217;t remember why but &#8220;prance&#8221; was critical to the word&#8217;s meaning. &#8220;Clud&#8221; had something to do with shit, I think, though I don&#8217;t remember the meaning we gave it. I left a cryptic message in my &#8220;Senior Will,&#8221; 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&#8217;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 &#8220;clud&#8221; 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&#8217;m not going to look for the picture I got of it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This audio reminds me that I&#8217;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&#8217;s words were an annoyance to a high school friend who wanted to be a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-181-2","category-voice","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-3PA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}