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When I gave my 3-yr-old daughter fresh blueberries with her breakfast this morning, she exclaimed, "Yummerific!" When I asked her where she had heard that word, she said she made it up (although I do see it in search engines, so she may have picked it up somewhere). Either way, I love that she came up with it and inserted it into conversation so wonderfully!
What kid-coined words do you love?
My brother came up with "flying gabingos" when he was too young to pronounce "pink flamingos". A couple of years ago we got him a T-shirt with a picture of a flamingo with the words "flying gabingos!" printed beneath it.
(I'm one to talk. When I was learning to read, I apparently pointed to a picture of some giraffes and said "that's a raff", and then to another animal in the background of the picture and added "and that's a raff run away".)
My brother was also responsible for calling the rearmost compartment of a station wagon the "backus". I always assumed it had something to do with the actor who played Mr Magoo, until one day it hit me that Mike meant "backest". (He was forever adding and deleting final T from words; used to ask if anyone wanted to play "chest".)
I've heard a lot of kids use "chest" for "chess".
I heard many kids in my son's class / soccer team, etc. use a verb form of "versus". They would hear something like "Steelers versus Giants" and took the "verses" they heard to mean "Steelers play against Giants". They would use it like "We're versing the other team tomorrow."
My son and his cousin combined "thorny" and "pokey" to describe "thorky" weeds.
Our family also has a lot of words and terms that are inside jokes. Some are so laden with exclusive background story that we can use them in public to add snarky undertext that no one else will get.
We've a number of family words/phrases invented by the kids.
The house we lived in when my daughter was wee, had a three-season type of porch–-an enclosed patio. She came up with the term, "patiporch." We adopted that immediately.
She also dubbed the fridge, the "fridgerfreezer."
"How 'bout that sound?" is a phrase we use frequently, made by combining "How about that?" and "How does that sound?" Another of my daughter's creations.
My son had issues with the b/v sounds and, for awhile, had a habit of adding R to words. To this day, we eat "bernaners" (bananas) and things are flavored with "berniller" (vanilla.)
He coined the term, "annoring." That's a combination of "annoying" and "boring." Someone teasing you over and over about something silly? Annoring. Tapping a pencil, over and over? Annoring.
I love that kids can be so creative with language.
Not really made-up words, and probably more some kind of speech processing problem, but my youngest sister used to transpose syllables in words. For "sewing machine" she would say "masewing chine" and for "spaghetti" she would say "busghetti." Those are just two examples I recall. She grew out of it around age 5-6, and has no speech problems as an adult, but it was kinda cute when she was young.
These are not your classic Spoonerisms. Not sure if there is a word for what she did. A speech therapist would probably have a word for it.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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