what are words for?

Sniglets, for those of you who are too young to know the difference between 33 and 45 is a lot more than just 12, were "words that should be in the dictionary, but aren't." They were part of this really funny -- and very 80s -- show on HBO called Not (Necessarily) the News, which I just loved when I was a kid, even though most of their political satire flew like a flock of nuclear-war-triggering geese right over my young head

They were hit and miss, but when they hit, they were pretty funny. For example, a hit and a miss:

Cheedle: The orange residue left on fingers after eating Cheetos or some other cheesy snack (Hall 1984: 21)

Blivet: to flip your pillow looking for a cool spot (Hall 1984: 14)

Everybody get it? It's silly. Anyway, I just made up two Sniglets of my own:

UPExcitement (you-pee-excitement): The feeling of happy anticipation one gets upon hearing a UPS delivery truck speed down the street, because their package is finally being delivered.

UPEnvy (you-pee-envy): The feeling that same person gets when UPS does not deliver to their house, but instead drops a package with a neighbor.

I will now take the extraordinarily pretentious step of releasing my new Sniglets, which could earn me millions of dollars and buy me a mansion and a yacht, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License, with a badge and everything.



Sweet.

Comments

[Samurai Avon Lady]

My favorite Sniglet came from my 1990 page-a-day calendar:
Spudrubble (spud-rub-bull) - the french fries left over in the bottom of the fast-food bag.

I actually used it in a sentence, a couple of weeks ago, further cementing my coworker's belief that I am "just not right..."

[shauna]

Lance Bass has a bunch of really good sniglets on his myspace blog. They're funny. You should check some of them out if you get a chance. Thanks for the background, though. Lance never mentioned anything about sniglets other than just the words themselves, and their meanings.

-Shauna

[joshua m. neff]

Lance Bass has a bunch of really good sniglets on his myspace blog.

The 21st century is a truly awesome place to live, when you have sentences like this one. I want to send this sentence back in time to November 12, 1955.

[ClunkClunk]

UPiSsed Off (you-pissed-off): When you arrive home only minutes after the UPS guy left a note on your door.

[TitanKT]

Your sniglets remind me of The Music Man... you know, where the whole town sings about how exciting it is when the Wells Fargo wagon is a-comin' down the street? Apparently UPExcitement has been around since Ron Howard was a boy. Except, back then they called it... Wellsfargowagonilla Thrilla, Wellsfargowagonusiasm, Wellsfargowagonandemonium... or something like that.

[Got Rice?]

My personal favorite sniglet is ShumPuppy. It is a word I use for small children who shuffle their feet and mutter to themselves. (This usually happens right after an adult has rained on their parade by telling them they could not take the circus elephant home with them.)

[Liz]

We always refer to UPS as "The Brown Santa". It sounds kinda dirty though...

[justme]

I've always liked Bevameter - The distance a coaster, attached to the bottom of a wet glass, will travel before it falls back to earth.

I like your's, too, Wil.

[jcg]

Furble. Running through an empty maze of ropes setup to guide the sheeple through to a checkpoint. Old favorite from my sniglet-a-day calendar. Still find myself using it, probably because of the long lines we're encountering almost everywhere these days.

[Astin]

I thought the fries leftover in the bag were called Bagglers.

Let's not forget Truthiness and the rest of Colbert's dictionary.

[esmerel]

Man, I haven't thought of sniglets in years. The only one I remember now is 'Gazoonting' - the act of using your nose to poke the center of a newspaper or magazine so that you can actually turn the page.

[jamenta]

You know when you've been snoogled by a sniglet. And if you are lucky enough to be Snagged as well, you're snug as a bug.

[meredith]

When I was in 9th grade, my Biology teacher awarded extra credit on every quiz for guessing definitions for Sniglets. Ah, those were the days.

(I used to have Sniglet bookmark: "Pigslice: the last piece of pizza, that everyone wants but nobody dares grab." I just thought of this while out with pizza with friends the other night...)

[longklaw]

I vaguely remember Not Necessarily the News and I'm a little younger than you are.

I just got a package from UPS today and I was sooo happy.

[Damon TF Buckwalter]

My mom and I used to watch NNTN together and we came up with several Sniglets. I can only remember two:

telepause: the time between turning the TV on and the picture appearing.

spoonmersion: the tendency for a spoon to slip into a full bowl.

Thanks for the walk down memory lane, Wil.

[Spinel]

So what do you call it when you want to congradulate them?

I did hear of something quite like sniglets a way long time ago in a Reader's Digest footer... the only one I remember now is frust: the line of dust left over when you brush stuff into a dustpan, and which you subsequently chase across the floor trying desperately to sweep up the rest of.

[viciousrumours]

My 13 year old suffers from both UPExcitement and UPEnvy. Now everytime she dashes to the door to see if they are stopping at our house, I'm going to think of this.

This also made me think of Douglas Adams and "The Meaning of Liff".

[Amber J]

My favorite has always been "Toefoo".... the crumbs you feel on your bare feet while walking in the kitchen.

[EdwoodCA]

"what are words for"...

"When no one listens anymore"

Missing Persons were a great band. Too bad they were pretty much only known as an '80s synth-pop band.

Warren, Terry, Chuck [too, I think]... hell, even Dale... all came from Frank Zappa's camp.

[You've gotta be a virtuoso to play with Frank.]

[Andrew]

I've created a few, but the only one I (care to) remember is "faux pas de deux," that little dance two people do who are trying to pass each other in a hallway and neither one has the good sense to stop moving so the other one can get around. Bonus points if they both stop at the same moment.

[Tim]

I haven't thought about NNtN in years. Damn you, Wil. Now I'll be up all night YouTubing.

[AMD]

I have a screensaver on my computer, Douglas Adam and John Lloyd's "Deeper Meaning of Liff" - "a dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet"; all the words listed are place names, some of my favourite "A's":

Adlestrop (n.)
That part of a suitcase which is designed to get snarled up on conveyor belts at airports. Some of the more modern adlestrop designs have a special 'quick release' feature which enables the case to lip open at this point and fling your underclothes into the conveyor belt's gearing mechanism.

Ahenny (adj.)
The way people stand when examining other people's bookshelves.

Ardslignish (adj.)
Adjective which describes the behaviour of Sellotape when you are tired.

[The Concordian]

Wil, I've always liked (and both my wife and I still use, in our middle 30s), "frust"...the aggravating little line of dirt, dust and crud that remains after scraping the floor sweepings into the dustpan.

[thirtyfour]

Ha- I got a Sniglets book for xmas one year in like middle school or something... My favorites were:

Ellacelleration - The mistaken belief that repeatedly pressing the elevator button will make it go faster

Twinch - The movement a dog makes with its head when it hears a high-pitched noise

Bovilexia - The uncontrollable urge to lean out the car window and yell "Moo!" every time you pass a cow

...and the accompanying drawings on the latter 2 were hiLARious! Rich Hall ruled.

[Kyle]

Esso-asso. The person who cuts through the gas station to avoid waiting at a traffic light. Always a favorite of mine. (And illegal, btw, in some places, or so I have been told.)