A few years ago one of my mates was telling me a story and she said that she was ‘scrampling‘ for something and I was like ‘What the hell does scrampling mean?‘. Turns out it was one of those weird made up words that only means something to her family. It means to pat around on shelves in the dark looking for something. It really is the perfect word. It’s practically onomatopoeia. I recently had a chat to some friends of mine about the made up words that we use in our homes and it was such an hilarious discussion I thought it would be awesome to swap made up family words with my readers. Here are mine.
11 Adorable Made Up Words
A wooze is basically a nap. ‘I feel so refreshed after my afternoon wooze.’ You can also be ‘woozy’ and be ‘woozing’.
Origin: unknown.
Any word that you can’t remember. ‘Mum can you get the rizzle out of the cutlery drawer?‘ It’s usually helpful to accompany this word with an action that represents the item that you’re after. Like a stirring action for the word ‘spoon’.
Origin: unknown.
A term of endearment used between two female friends in a text. ‘Hey Weertie Pie! Want me to make a cake for dessert tonight?‘.
Origin: I was texting my bestie and my phone auto corrected ‘sweetie’ to ‘weertie’ and it kind of stuck.
Underwear. ‘I’m out of clean grundies, I’ll have to do some washing.‘
Origin: Unknown.
Your bum. ‘I fell over and now I have a massive bruise on my de Botton!‘ This one is heaps more effective if you say it in a French accent.
Origin: Mr Smaggle liked saying the name ‘Alain de Botton’ in a posh French accent and then ‘de Botton’ just became what we called our bums. For no real reason at all.
Something gross. ‘Ewwww… the garbage bag split and the bottom of the bin is all gunkan.’
Origin: On a trip to New York we found a sushi bar that had ‘All you can eat gunkan‘. Once inside we ate a piece of yucky fishy fish and dubbed it ‘gunkan‘ so it ended up meaning something gross.
The most devastated you can be. ‘How devastated was she? Devastated devastated or laundromat devastated?‘
Origin: My friend had just ended a long term relationship and she was acting a little whacky and insisted on going to the laundromat to wash all her clothes while drinking copious amounts of wine and hysterically sobbing at regular intervals. So now when someone is upset it’s on a scale of Sad to Laundromat Devastated. Laundromat Devastated is the most sad.
A bit cranky. ‘Argh! I’ve got the jib jibs.‘ or ‘I’m feeling all jibbly.‘
Origin: Unknown.
Term of endearment usually used between a romantically involved couple. ‘Hey chew, date night tonight? Movies?‘
Origin: Unknown.
Teeth or toes. ‘I just have to brush my tibbles and then we can go.’ or ‘Can you grab me some socks? My tibbles are freezing!’
Origin: Unknown.
A place that really stinks. ‘Whoa! It stinks in here! I think King Boo built his poo castle here.’
Origin: Hazy. The King Boo we’re referring to is from Mario Kart but we have no idea where the Poo Castle came from.
Do you have any made up words in your regular vocabulary?
I love hearing the weird things that people say in private. Do share!