One of my brothers recently made up a word: ambisucrosity which means: able to use either hand for different tasks as the hand/brain dictates – or "sort-of ambidextrous, but not quite". He was wondering if there is a word for sort-of ambidextrous and not knowing or finding one, he made up his own. I think it’s a pretty cool word and should be added to the dictionary (in part so spellcheck will leave me alone!!!!).
We had a little fun commenting on the topic of my brother’s made-up word (post on Facebook), including my mentioning one of my characters (from the children’s stories I have written) who loves to make up fun words like fabtabalicious and fantabulous. One of my sisters said she thought fantabulous was an actual word and that she has always used it. I could not begin to disagree with her (not that I would have anyway) as spellcheck (is this another blog on spellcheck making life miserable for us?!) did not light it up with the noxious, red, squiggly line. My sister and I both suspected that fantabulous must have been added to the dictionary because so many people used it.
Interesting. If we want a made-up word accepted as a real word, do we call/text/email/snail mail/knock on the doors of all our friends and family – and anyone on the street who will listen to us – and tell them to use it constantly until it shows up in the dictionary??? Hmmm… (I’m doing a lot of “hmmming” lately – I did it two weeks ago, too. Thinking is good. We usually come up with our best ideas when we’re thinking…not that this blog is a best idea.)
I told my brother that I liked his new word. Like my husband’s coworker’s word for reversible and inside out (innerversible), it has some merit for becoming a real, accepted word. And, although my brother’s word may be a more important word than my character’s silly made-up words like jumptific, all word creation is fun. (No mean words allowed – only intelligent, needed, silly, or fun words are allowed). Try it yourself – put a couple words together and create a new one, or just create one out of thin air. It’s not as hard as you think – I can do it when I’m not even meaning to – and it’s fun. Let me know what you come up with!
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