Perfectly Cromulent Word: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A character quotes a seemingly made-up word that no one has ever heard of before then. This is usually a word the writer just made up, but is occasionally a real obscure, archaic, or obsolete word; for instance, 400 years before we had computers, we had ''email'', which is a raised or embossed image pressed into metal.

A type of [[Neologism]], of which [[Scrabble Babble]] is a subtrope. Some examples are another form of [[Malaproper]]. See also [[Delusions of Eloquence]] and [[Informed Obscenity]] aka [[Snugglebunnies]].

 

{{examples}}

== [[Advertising]] ==

{{quote|"That isn't a real word!"

"It came out of my mouth, didn't it?" }}

 

* Skank Zero Hopeless-Savage's (of the ''[[Hopeless Savages]]'' comic series) vocabulary is comprised of many of these. Luckily, there is a glossary in the back of the collected volume (as Zero says "some of my best words are friends.") Swerval.

 

== [[Film]] ==

** In the German translation, this word was "Spunk", which isn't a ''German'' word. In English it's "spink".

* [[Douglas Adams]] invented some "hitchhiker slang" for ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'', such as "sass" (know, be aware of, have sex with), "hoopy" (really together guy) and "frood" (really amazingly together guy).

* Spinfer, Falshed's smarmy [[Hypercompetent Sidekick]] in ''[[Welkin Weasels]]'', was described as "smooling" into a room. The narrator gives this a [[Lampshade Hanging]] with: "This is not a real word, but describes the action perfectly."

* ''[[Redwall]]'''s babies and toddlers are known as "Dibbuns". Brian Jacques was asked if this was an actual British regional slang term, and he said that it's actually just a nonsense word which sounded appropriately cute.

* Edward Lear invented the adjective "runcible" to provide extra syllables in his poetic writings. "Runcible spoon" (from "The Owl and the Pussycat") is now defined in dictionaries.

 

* [[Blackadder]] trying to confuse the writer of <s>the first</s> a well-known dictionary:

{{quote|'''Dr. [[Samuel Johnson]]:''' [places two manuscripts on the table, but picks up the top one] Here it is, sir. The very cornerstone of English scholarship. This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.

** In an earlier episode, Chandler, bemoaning his pickiness with women, once mentioned he broke up with a girl for (mis)pronouncing a word, "supposebly" (meant to be "supposedly".) The incorrect version seems to stick with Joey, though.

* In ''[[Will and Grace]]'', Grace says "I'm spramped if I do, I'm spramped if I don't!" and Jack corrects her on her usage. This is a reference to Jack's [[Kwyjibo]] earlier in the episode.

* In a ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' sketch, the word "splunge" is coined by frightened screenwriters to provide temporary respite from tyrannical Hollywood producer Irving C. Saltzberg. It means, "It's a great idea, but possibly not, and I'm not being indecisive!"

* In a ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch parodying ''[[Inside The Actors Studio|Inside the Actor's Studio]]'', Will Ferrell (impersonating James Lipton) describes an actor's performance as so great that no word in English can do it justice, and that he must invent a new word right now to properly convey its greatness: ''Scrumtrulescence''. The performance was ''scrumtrulescent''.

** Also in ''SNL'', and spoofing Bush's supposed lack of intelligence (even if the sketch is from before his first election): the mediator of the Gore-Bush debate asks them for a one-word "best argument for the campaign". Bush's one is "Strategerie".

** In a joking [[Take That]] at his critics, Bush and other members of his administration continued to drop the word "strategery" into public statements, and it was used as the title of a book about the President which depicted a disconnect between his shrewd political savvy as represented in the book, and his bumbling buffoonery as represented by his enemies.

* ''[[Look Around You]]'': Spoofs the wealth of jargon found in the world of science by making up a host of new words, including fictitious chemicals ("bumcivilian", "segnomin"), laboratory equipment ("Besselheim plate", "gribbin"), units of measurement ("billigram", "quorums per second") and many more.

** George Martin coined the same word as a humorous way of describing a recording technique to [[The Beatles]]. The technique in question is that of dubbing a track with a version of itself delayed a few milliseconds, so that different frequencies either cancel or reinforce themselves. This also plays with the brain's mechanism for locating the source of sounds, giving it an interesting psychedelic flavour that the Beatles liked. The effect is still known as "flange".

*** The effect was in use before The Beatles (though can't say for sure it wasn't Martin who named it). In those days was to set up two identical recordings on two different machines and play them in perfect sync. One then touched the outside edge of one of the tape reels to set one of the machines ever so slightly out of synch. As a flange is an older word used to mean the outer edge of something, it is thus an entirely legitimate use of the term. Presumably it was used as rimming sounded too rude even then.

** Mind you, "flange" is a very real and perfectly ordinary word. They're just using it in an unconventional way.

* ''[[Veronicas Closet|Veronica's Closet]]'': One of the characters makes up the word "acribitzed" (synonym for "went up" or "increased"), then drops it in an article hoping that it will take off. It does.

** There's also the word "gazzizza". It's kind of like a street "aloha"

* On its inaugural show, ''[[The Colbert Report]]'' created and defined the word "truthiness" (defining reality by what feels in your gut like it should be true, rather than what is actually true.) which went on to become a runaway hit, starting with getting chosen as the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year for 2005. Some of its popularity was almost certainly because of its usefulness in describing the policies of the then-current administration.

** Also, wikiality: the concept that something is taken to be true if enough people think it is.

* On ''[[The Cosby Show]]'', Rudy invented the word ''zrbrt'': to kiss someone on the cheek while blowing a raspberry.

* ''[[You Have Been Watching]]'':

{{quote|'''Charlie Brooker''': I used up every negative word known to man to describe John Barrowman's 'Tonights the Night' so when 'Totally Saturday' came along I was forced to invent the word 'Shittifying'}}

* [[30 Rock|Jack Donaghy]] recently coined the term "innoventually" during 24 straight hours of successful problem-solving (referred to, by him of course, as "Reaganing"). Of course, at the very last moment, his Reaganing (which would have been rewarded with a shower of lavish gifts) was rendered moot by his inability to solve Liz Lemon's intimacy problem...at least not until after the 24 hours had elapsed. [[It Makes Sense in Context]]...the Reaganing, not "innoventually".

** Also, "[[Getting Crap Past the Radar|Whuck...?]]" from Liz.

* On ''[[Mr. Show]]'', a character was introduced as "Edmund Premington is a hunter, an explorer, a novelist, and an adventurer; a travelliare, an explorist, and a noveller."

* On ''[[The Sarah Silverman Program]]'', in the episode "Kangamangus", Sarah tries to coin a new word and comes up with "ozay" (hard to define, but when you just feel...ozay). Her attempts to popularize it pale next to the organic spread of "dotnose", which Brian comes up with accidentally when Steve is so stubborn that he won't acknowledge a marker dot on his own nose despite everyone mentioning it. Others find "dotnose" offensive for no particular reason (other than that it sounds insulting), and at a dictionary induction ceremony, Brian and Steve are threatened with the "kangamangus" (a very specific physical retribution).

** The narrator would have known this if he had watched a single episode of ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'', where Helga said this word so frequently as to really make it [[Catch Phrase|her own]].

* In ''[[Hustle]]'', Mickey and Emma have a long debate over whether 'stickability' is a word. Mickey insists that if it isn't, then it should be.

* A common occurrence in ''[[A Bit of Fry and Laurie]]''.

* [[Victorious]]-"Oh my God, she's having heart confarctions!!"

* ''[[The Vicar of Dibley]]'': Jim and Frank come over, interrupting Geraldine's rendezvous with David's brother ([[It's a Long Story|long story]]). They have a crossword question. She makes up the word "ploddipop" to get them out of the house.

 

* The [[Steve Miller Band]] speaks of the [[wikipedia:Pompatus|pompatus]] of love in "The Joker."

* Lampshaded as [[MC Frontalot]] acknowledges that "possibleness is not a cromulent word" in "Nerdcore Rising."

* [[Bon Iver]] has the title of "Flume" (which is an obscure word referring to a river or waterfall) as well as 'fide' and 'fane' from "Perth."

 

== [[New Media]] ==

* Done in a c-span type episode of ''[[The Onion]]'' where a senator starts to use the word "Pronk" in his vocabulary (It's supposed to be used in the positive, as in "These pancakes were pronking delicious!"). [[Hilarity Ensues]] when said senator replaces 95 percent of his vocabulary with pronk.

* Blogger/humorist [[James Lileks]] is known for popularizing "contrude". An example from [[The Bleat]] - May 1997- "Don't contrude with my train of thought, I'm on to something here"

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* One ''[[Get Fuzzy]]'' strip from an arc about their new manager had said manager use the words "Dinnerfy" and "Eatification" to describe eating.

 

* [[Shakespeare]] is famous for this. Google it. Of course, there is some argument as to whether he was the first to use the words, or simply the first to write them down. Due to the vast number of words he "made up," it seems likely that it's some of both. Due to his creativity with the language, he has had perhaps more influence on English than any other individual.

* The ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'' musical has a number of these being used by corrupt headmistress/press secretary Madame Morrible, including "definish" (as in "definite"...ish), "braverism" and "surreptitially". This [[The Barnum|suits her character]] well.

** Also from [[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]], G(a)linda gives us confusifying. Yep. Confusifying.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Jade Empire]]'' features a character, Qui the Promoter, who talks almost entirely like this, including a [[Shout-Out]] to the ''Simpsons'' quote at the top of the page.

{{quote|'''Qui the Promoter:''' This is turning out to be an excellent day. Most austipacatious indeed!

'''Qui the Promoter:''' Don't get flusterated. Everything I say is perfectly cromulent, and it might do you well to embiggen your vocabulary before you fling accretions my discretion. }}

* This is the source of a running gag in ''[[Fable]] II.'' You see, it turns out that there's a new thesaurus being published in Albion...

* [[Sly Cooper|The Murray]] hopes you were not harmed by his meteoropic entrance, for the [[Signature Move|Thunder Flop]] knows neither friend nor foe, only ''[[Large Ham|destruction!]]''

 

* Characters in the ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' seem to make up a good portion their language on the fly. The bizarre thing is it's [[It Makes Sense in Context|usually perfectly clear]] what they mean even when the words are completely random (e.g. "This electricity bill is ''pretendous!'').

** Strong Bad even contemplated making an entire dictionary "fo' his own words".

 

* This is part of Marcus' schtick in ''[[1/0]]'', with a dash of [[Delusions of Eloquence]].

* [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/12/10 This] ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' has two examples, one of which is from [[Real Life]].

** And the gaming industry practice that they describe as the [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/12 bullshot].

** Gabe stumbles into a cromulent word while [http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/06/18 trying to cheat at Scrabble on his smartphone.]

* Yeager in ''[[Nodwick]]'' managed to invent an Eighth Deadly Sin - which he duly termed Blasphotrociterra-o-rama.

* [http://xkcd.com/739/ Malamanteau] is a perfectly cromulent word, though ''[[Xkcd]]'' disagrees.

'''William Wotcherclaws:''' Forgive us! We were all too slorddly, master! }}

 

 

* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' is of course the trope namer.

** The word biggen, however, is a real word, dating back to 1643.

*** Embiggen is not.

* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]''. When Spongebob accidentally shrinks Squidward with Mermaidman's belt, [[Cloudcuckoolander|Patrick]] suggests turning the belt buckle from M for mini to W for wumbo. When Spongebob disputes the word, Patrick goes into a mini-rant about it.

{{quote|'''Spongebob''': Patrick, I don't think Wumbo is a real word...

** In part 2 of ''Snow Wade and the 77 Dwarves'', Roy is refusing to kiss Snow Wade so she wakes up, but then reads the story and is happy to do it because he learned he gets "20 million gazortniks".

{{quote|'''Roy''': I don't know what a gazortnik is, but 20 million of ''anything'' makes ya filthy rich! }}

{{quote|'''Applebloom:''' Cool! ... If you were actually ''victory-ful'' at something.

'''Sweetie Belle:''' That's not a word!

* From [[Young Justice]] Robin {{spoiler|1/Nightwing}} is fond of taking the prefixes off of words to make new ones. His favourite is "whelmed": what you get when you're neither overwhelmed or underwhelmed. The fandom has embraced it whole-heartedly.

 

* An old joke: "Be alert! Your country needs lerts!"

** Another Joke: "Boy to girl: Do you like Kipling? Girl to boy: I don't know, I've never kippled"

* An accidental example was the word [http://www.fun-with-words.com/websters_dord.html "dord"] (supposedly meaning "density"), which appeared in ''Webster's Third New International Dictionary'' from 1934 to 1939. It was a based on a card reading "D or d/ density", but was not spaced properly.

** This has also appeared in an anecdote about a girl who said to her boyfriend, "How does it feel to be adored?" To which he replied, "What's a dord?"

* The word "ablexxive" started this way, with a middle-school student making it up and putting it on a vocab quiz.

* [[Isaac Asimov]] used the word "robotics" in his early ''Robot'' stories, assuming it to be a logical extension of the word "robot". Modern etymologists believe him to have been the first person to have used the term. "Robot" itself was made up for Karel Capek's play ''[[R.U.R.|RUR]]''. It's derived from ''robota'', the Czech word for "forced labor".

* Many Internet captchas use these kinds of words, especially those from Google and ReCaptcha (which, in the latter case, are always accompanied by a perfectly normal word).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon]]