A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 1036

Grandcrits: Adult children’s pets, grand pets, and grand critters.
-Lisa Dahlseid, Minneapolis, Minneapolis (ldahlseid aol.com)

Maskation: the state of wearing a mask. There can be misunderstandings during conversation when masks are worn as it is easy to hear a word incorrectly. It is the pandemic equivalent of the famous scene in “Take the Money and Run” movie with Woody Allen’s illegible note demanding money during a bank robbery. I use it as follows: Lost in maskation like lost in translation.
-Geeta Pasi, Washington, DC (geetapasi gmail.com)

Some years ago I started using the word replyall as a verb (as in, I replyalled your email).
-Mark Adler, Béziers, France (markadler orange.fr)

Lately, I’ve started using PCR as a verb, as in “I’m getting PCRed on Tuesday before I go on my trip.”
-Linda Waldman, Guilford, Connecticut (walss aol.com)

Very often when I’m driving, especially in unfamiliar areas, my wife will tell me where to go (literally, of course ;^) by consulting her GPS and actual paper maps. She does this very nicely, and I’m glad to have her help, but she calls it nagivating as she’s helping me navigate with a little gentle nagging.
-Don Fearn, Rochester, Minnesota (pooder charter.net)

A coworker uses the word nibling for nephews and nieces, but it seems inappropriate when referring to humans who are 30 or 50 years old. So I came up with sibspring for “sibling’s offspring”.
-Marietta Hitzemann, Arlington, Massachusetts (marietta.hitzemann protonmail.com)
[Also shared by Charles Conaway, Tallahassee, Florida (cconaway fsu.edu)]

When my wife’s delivery arrives on the truck with the smile on the side she will jump up and down while clapping her hands like a kid at Christmas. She is having an ordergasm.
-Joe Dzengeleski, Hampton, New Hampshire (jdzski comcast.net)

The word I coined is permademic, a permanent epidemic. What we’ll be experiencing with the endless variations of Covid formed in the petri dish of the unvaccinated, the careless, and the ignorant.
-Jess Ellis Knubis, Fairfield, California (jess knubis.com)

Flogosphere: Where products and ideas are publicized and criticized online. A combination of “flog” (to publicize aggressively, to beat or strike with a rod or whip, to chastise with repeated blows) and “blogosphere” (all blogs and their interconnections).
-Sheila Moore, Belmont, California (sheilamoore07 comcast.net)

Hopetimistic. An _optimistic_ person is very confident about a good outcome with some evidence to back it up. _Hopeful_ persons don’t share the same degree of confidence to call themselves optimists, they are merely hoping for a happy ending with a lesser degree of evidence. But when a person has a strong hopeful feeling about something, but not so confident that they would wager on it, that person could say he is hopetimistic about the outcome. Or, so methinks.
-Barry Lee Marris, Fort Bragg, California (barry.marris gmail.com)

I coined the word sporcular, like a spork, meaning something that is a combination of two things that isn’t as good as either of the originals alone, e.g. a desktop tape dispenser/pencil holder, or a scissors/bottle opener.
-Alan Turner, New Castle, Delaware (arturner gmail.com)

Manchin, verb. To vote one way and then talk as if you are a big supporter of the law/regulation your vote killed. Example: Senator Manchin’s statement this weekend about protecting voter rights was the best, but certainly not the only, example of manchining we have seen recently.
-Betty Rauch, New York, New York (rauchbp gmail.com)

Chocologic: Any logic used to justify the consumption of chocolate. My daughter coined this one!
-Jill Fitzpatrick, Glen Allen, Virginia (itsjfitz verizon.net)

Circa 2002, I coined the word spax for unwanted fax communications. Mind you, in that era, facsimile via telephone lines was still a rather prevalent means of communications, not yet supplanted by email. One technocritic called it “An egregious waste of bandwidth.” Alas, spax was a word coined near the end of its relevance.
-Lorenzo Boyd, Iron Mountain, Michigan (agedbeyondperfection gmail.com)

Up here in Canada my family has coined the word snoraining for when it’s partly raining, partly snowing.
-Gillian Livingston, Toronto, Canada (gillianlivingston gmail.com)

I came up with the word granuclarity for “the quality of being small and clear”. Now my goal-setting has better granuclarity. As B.J. Fogg of Stanford has shown, granuclarity makes a goal more likely to get done. See his wonderful book, Tiny Habits. Please note, however, that Professor Fogg is not fond of the word “goal”, for technical reasons I forget.
-Leslie Lowe, New Orleans, Louisiana (leslie leslie.ms)

I think we could coin chrino (or cino), standing for Christian in name only with such as Big T and his ilk.
-Dan Dippold, Brownsburg, Indiana (hillyoung117 gmail.com)

If you are a blue-collar worker like me, you are familiar with that afternoon lull. The time after lunch when your belly is full and you just don’t give much of a damn about doing anything. President Lyndon B. Johnson was notorious for his siestas where he would put on his PJs and take a 30 minute nap... above the covers. I figured hell, if it was good enough for the president of the United States, it should work for me too. Thus, my invention of the word teener. As I don’t have 30 minutes to spare in the middle of my workday, a teener is a nap lasting anywhere from 13-19 minutes. For me, the teener has proven very effective in combating the afternoon blues.
-Wes Zercher, Dallas, Texas (weszercher yahoo.com)

Bagwallers: People who stand up close to the airport luggage carousel waiting for their bags and create a human wall so others can’t get through to reach their own bags. I saw my suitcase slide down the belt ramp, but I had to run around the carousel chasing after it because of all the bagwallers.
-John Sturtevant, Seattle, Washington (johnsturtevant mac.com)

Goldiloxian adj. The condition of being just right.
-Andrew Lloyd, Borris, Ireland (knockroe gmail.com)

A coworker and I coined supluralfluous: A superfluous plurality. Example: geeses, sheeps, deers.
-Christi Newbury, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (1tcscn gmail.com)

Republiconian: To be aggressively closed-minded, and as though one has a “stick up their rear”.
Christionic: To falsely put on a facade of morality and concern for others.
-Jordana Capra, Santa Clarita, California (jordanacapra earthlink.net)

Ecolapse: The simultaneous collapse of ecology / environment with collapse of the economy, a situation which is close to fruition with the increased effects of rapid climate change / global warming.
-Roger Chambers, Utica, New York (rcjcrn2 yahoo.com)

As a high-school teacher, I have the opportunity to watch as our young people grab hold of and embrace new technology. Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes not so much. The word I coined that I think may be new is earsicle, referring to the earpods or earbuds that operate on a Bluetooth connection and hang down out of the user’s ears. They resemble icicles, hence the name.
-Tom Tyson, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (ttyson sasd.net)

My candidate for a self-made word is yule brinner: a combination of Christmas brunch and dinner for late risers after celebrating the babe in the manger the night before. I have used the name of the well-known actor of “The King and I”, “Anastasia”, “The Magnificent Seven”, etc., admittedly taking liberties with it, as the thespian spelled his first name Yul, without the -e.
-Andrew Pressburger, Toronto, Canada (andpress sympatico.ca)

Joblet: A job that is less than full time. A job that is seasonal. A person can have many joblets, i.e., babysitting, working at the polls during an election , delivering packages at Christmas.
-Cathy Reynolds, Marietta, Georgia (pallottac bellsouth.net)

The artist Georgia O’Keefe is practically a cornerstone of the economy of Abiquiú, NM, where she spent a great deal of her creative life. I’ve called the local preoccupation with her life and work Georgialatry.
-Susan Nielsen, Abiquiú, New Mexico (snielsen1 earthlink.net)

We were electing the board secretary for our mountain retreat center. The young man we elected had a wealth of technical knowledge none of the rest of us had, useful in sharing documents, doing projects in groups that he organized on screen in real time, fixing all our login glitches, and so on. I named him our Techretary. The name stuck, for obvious reasons.
-Kathy Blomker, Cottage Grove, Wisconsin (kblomker gmail.com)

A rainvoid is the dry space under an overpass during a rainstorm. It is often experienced as a sudden and momentary silence as you drive under the overpass. For me, it’s an enjoyable little treat. It can also include the area under an umbrella or awning... but in these cases, there is no sudden silence.
-Dan Morrissey, Alva, Florida (dan seemore.solar)

Homebrewed by me: homeopathetic; this to reflect upon my opinion of medical hooey.
-Stuart Klipper, Minneapolis, Minnesota (sklipper bitstream.net)

Bulswangari: A word I made up without any meaning, used when one wants to use a unique word without any meaning.
-Dan Brook, San Francisco, California (brook brook.com)