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What’s the Cafugelty with Defugalty?

Alice in Aiken, South Carolina, says that when working for the U.S. Navy, she’d hear sailors as What’s the defugalty? meaning “What’s the problem?” She wonders if defugalty is a legitimate word. It’s an intentional mispronunciation of difficulty, and it has lots of different spellings, including defulgaty and the variant cafugelty. Other examples of such wordplay include saying coinkydink for coincidence and on porpoise instead of on purpose. This is part of a complete episode.

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