familylect
n.— «Not those complex computer codes or ubiquitous bar codes or the lol codes used in so many IMs. Rather, the secret acronyms, subtextual phrases and redefined nouns that people invent at home.…Academics have developed a term for these kinds of codes. It’s called “familylect.”» —“Speaking in COD…“ by Melissa Dribben Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania) May 21, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...