Apparently Shakespeare was great at this. Examples of his include words like “eyeball”, “foul-mouthed” and “bedazzled”. (I’m assured that he didn’t invent “vagazzled”). Modern examples would be things like “googled” and “texting” I suppose.
Anyway, I’ve been doing this for some time but didn’t realise it probably belongs to level 2 thinking (contorting things to fit one’s own thought structure). As high brow as that seems, I think the examples that I come up with are fairly low brow (I mean, I really got a laugh out of the fact neologism has the word “jism” in it). Crass, I know, but as I said, low brow.
Here are some of my recent examples (which revolve around my current over-weightness and lack of exercise):
Faturation point – The point at which you realise you are too fat and need to consider changing your ways.
Fateaued – the point where your weight loss plateaus
Fatigued – when you get bored of talking about weight and diets
Windicator – a term for cyclists. Anything that blows around to indicate the wind direction (flags, leaves etc). I’m sure this also could be used for food stuffs that have a high flatulence rating eg “Those beans have a high windicator rating. I’d better avoid them.”
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that this can actually be a lot of fun and certainly can be used to kill some time on long car journeys with the family. However, I’ve seen this deteriorate into a rendition of a parody of the famous Frozen song “Let it go!” which became “Let one go!” involving the lyric “let the brown wind flow”.
Ok, enough of that nonsense. Just have a shot and see if you can come up with some fun words that previously didn’t exist.
Time – as much as you want
Equipment – a brain usually suffices
Cost – free
Difficulty – depends on the complexity of the word. Recently I came up with some new drug names including oxyparacodafen which required a fair amount of linguistic gymnastics.
Partner Annoyance Factor – I’m not allowed to sing in the car any more unless it’s wind the bloody bobbin up!
Family – fun for all (as long as it’s kept clean I’m informed).
Rewards – really it’s all just about fits and giggles this one. Give it a go.
