Stainers, Vehomethic Mucous and Stetic Beans · Nov 17, 01:57 PM
Children and adults sometimes make up words on the spot. Not quite able to recall the right word, sometimes a close guess will get the right idea across. I think these illicit words have great charm. Here are some that caught my eye recently.
Stainers. Lillies have staining pollen. Sometimes we remove the stamens just in case. I think Daisy misheard us once and now calls them stainers.
Vehomethic. I might not have quite the right spelling. I saw this on a blog, and the context implied strongly voiced criticism on a large scale. Perhaps from vehement, or venom, or behemoth, with an -ic suffix for good measure. It has style!
Mucous, from web forums. Often used when mucus would be correct, mucous is somehow more mucus-y. Although I prefer the correct meaning – of or pertaining to, or tainted by, mucus.
Stetic, from email discussions. I think an enthusiastic advocate of open source software, particularly GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) invented this word, broadly meaning ‘aesthetically pleasing’. Partly as a joke at the expense of the author (English wasn’t his first language), but also because it captured the mood of the discussion, this word has stuck. There are many references to it online now, and it has even been used as a name for a project
Beans. OK this isn’t a new word, but I heard it used in a new way. A colleague, whose first language is Spanish, said she was out of beans. After a moment I realised this was the opposite of being ‘full of beans’. I feel like that sometimes!
<<<The Last One is Special · Confessions of a Classroom Assistant>>>