Ask Lemmy

My family calls the TV remote a "gonk" because apparently my grandpa called it that once back when they were still a pretty new thing, and it stuck. My mom and her siblings passed it on to their own kids, and now there's just a small packet of people in Minnesota who call TV remotes gonks, much to the confusion of our peers.

legiterally

I have long covid, I'm in the menopause, and I deal with three separate languages each day.

Anyway, gulls are sea pigeons. You're welcome.

Narp

i have sat staring at the word I wrote: "uv" trying to figure out why it was wrong

uv course

Yes, since in my native language creating new words is a build-in feature (I'm finnish). You don't know what's that called? Forgot the word? A new thing that doesn't even have a word for it? Just slap two or more together and it's fine

Similar thing happens to me with certain subjects I mostly only ever discuss online in English or hear talked about on English-language podcasts.

Then when I try talking about them in my native language, I often realize I don't have the vocabulary for it. Depending on who I'm talking to, I'll either just drop the English term in there or have to pause and hunt for the closest equivalent in my own language - which isn't always easy.

My partner says "pizza rind" for the crust edge that she won't eat.

Happends to me all the time, more so since I got COVID. Especially embarrassing when public speaking

My friend had brain surgery for an aneurysm, and every so often she fumbles a word as a result. One day she wanted to say the word lumberjacks, but her brain came up with logfarmers instead.

Omnitemporally, or put another way, circumclockularly. That's how words innoventually enter the lexicon.

In the context of sorting rubbish:

combustibles / flammables -> burnables

I don’t intentionally make them up, it’s just what comes to me as my brain frantically tries to figure out the right word. Like “fish museum.”

There's the -dooj suffix, which means "a familiar thing that should be around here somewhere, and that has such-and-so quality." This is useful for asking questions like "Where's the ... the clickydooj?"

• clickydooj — TV remote
• stickydooj — roll of masking tape, wad of blue-tack, etc.
• pokeydooj — sharp tool, digging stick, etc.
• dogwalkydooj — leash
• scoopydooj — ice cream scoop
• pinchydoojes — tongs

I have cryptolalia. So... squirtainly.

I remember there was a reddit community about this for a while, but I can't remember what it was.

My favorite that I've used on occasion during a brain fart is 'food laundry' when I can't remember 'dishes'

A patient i worked with did this a lot, often using same or similar sounding words.

Medical or technical things were often alosorous, usually too alosorous.

People got described as mashoki or mershoki - i couldn't tell which it was supposed to be.

There were one or two other ones that came up regularly and a host of one-offs. The only one-off i remember is that my smile was as lovely as a han-gono.

A friend went through a lot of relationships last year and at one point I just lost track of their names so I started calling them a random woman's name which stuck, and now the whole group of friends refers to his various love interests with that name.

Hippiepotamus

chingadera

also

dakine/ da kine for general use

I make words up for things I don't even forget because at this moment I know it's the right word. And I keep them.

Or just substitute whatever comes to mind first.

Discombobulator

Nukamajig is something id expect in fallout

I find using jawn helpful. I'm not from philly but it works everywhere

Swedish is awesome with compound words, say that you forget the Swedish word for "computer", "dator", you could just use "informationshanteringsmaskin" instead!

I used three words to make one compound word, the words I used was:

"Information", "hantering" and "maskin"