Perfectly Cromulent Word

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Mrs. Krabappel: "Embiggens"? I never heard that word before I moved to Springfield. Ms. Hoover: I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word. —The Simpsons

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.

Named for the above-quoted exchange from an episode of The Simpsons. (Incidentally, the word embiggen was later used in a completely cromulent paper on string theory. It's on page 31 here).

Examples of Perfectly Cromulent Word include:

Advertising

• Koodo Mobile's newest ad campaign centers around made-up words of varying levels of cromulence, such as "Thumbactionist", "Tabrific", "Bigbillification", and other things that sound like they came out of an ad campaign in 1984.
  • A few years ago^[when?], a car ad in the UK was very similar, but exclusively picked two (often opposed) words, and mashed them together- "Sporty" and "Safe" became "Spafe", for instance. Richard Hammond deemed this to be a load of shiny and bright.
• A recent^[when?] Green Lantern themed cell phone commercial describes its internet surfing as "faster-er."

"That isn't a real word!" "It came out of my mouth, didn't it?"

Comic Books

• 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

• Jay from the View Askewniverse likes to use the word "Snoogans" as his "I agree" catchphrase.
• Chass Michael Michaels from Blades of Glory offers the word "Mind-bottling", which may or may not be a limited vocabulary version of "Mind-boggling".
• Mary Poppins gave us "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."
  • Apparently, it's a disease of the liver.
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang used "phantasmagorical" in a similar way, although that word actually dates to the turn of the 19th century.
• In Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, Rain admits she couldn't find a word to describe a character, so she made one up ("epucious").
  • In Sleeper, Diane Keaton's character describes a friend's painting as "pure keane. No, it's greater than keane...it's cugat." (The made-up words are a Shout-Out to '60s schlock artist Walter Keane and bandleader-turned-cartoonist Xavier Cugat, respectively.)
• From Kung Pow

The Chosen One: Killing is bad. And wrong. There should be a stronger word for killing, like BADWRONG, or BADONG. Yes, killing is BADONG. From now on I shall stand for the opposite of killing; GNODAB.

• A few minutes into The Bachelor and the Bobby-soxer, servant Bessie tries to wake up one of her charges:

Susan: Just five more minutes, Bessie. Bessie: No, ma'am, now! Susan: But Bessie, I feel absolutely sklonklish.

• Cannibal! The Musical has "shpadoinkle", a word used repeatedly by different characters in wildly inconsistent contexts.
• Team America: World Police (by the same creators) has variations on "valmorphanize" (e.g. "valmorify") which is used by characters to describe every bit of Applied Phlebotinum in the film.

Literature

• The most famous example of this is Jabberwocky, almost completely made up of nonsense words. However, some nonsense words became real words. (See: vorpal, chortle.)
  • The best part is that even though of all the adjectives in the poem, only one is standard English, Lewis Carroll uses onomatopoeia in such a way that it still makes sense! (It helps that he uses about seventeen actual nouns.)
• Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar used this technique, including the proper choice of onomatopoeic inventions, in chapter 68 of his novel Rayuela. Trying to interpret the meaning won't get you anywhere but if you pay attention to the rhythm and the sounds, you can easily notice that the scene describes a sex encounter between the two main characters.
  • Also used in the short story La inmiscusión terrupta from Historias de Cronopios y de Famas.
• The book Frindle is based completely around the protagonist making up a new word and trying to make it catch on. It means "pen."
• In Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, the first hint that a civilization has been taken over by the Blight is that words like "armiphlage" and "clenirations" (representing concepts the translator AI can't handle) start creeping into its newsgroup postings.
• H.P. Lovecraft occasionally used words that, while real, were so archaic and obscure that they seem to fit this trope. Chief among these is "skyey" from The Colour Out of Space.
  • An even better example is "non-euclidean". It is a perfectly normal word referring to geometry and not at all related to sanity-breaking monster from beyond the stars.
• In that it was a word before its popularization, albiet with a different meaning, J. K. Rowling's use of the word "Muggles" in Harry Potter fits here. Having said that, "Muggle" became one of the more important terms in the series' mythology, as opposed to being a throwaway gag.
• Gene Wolfe, in the Book of the New Sun, uses a number of such words, mostly archaisms referring to things of the distant future for which our current language doesn't have proper words. "Destrier," an old word for an armored knight's horse, is used for a bio-engineered creature that runs fast enough to allow successful cavalry charges against enemies with "high-energy armament."
  • Another good one from The Shadow of the Torturer: Fuligin. It's a color blacker than black. So there is one more black.
• Roald Dahl's BFG. And how! (By the way, don't try the snozzcumbers.)
• Pippi Longstocking once made up such a nice new word that she spent the rest of that chapter trying to find out what it could mean. It's a beetle.
  • 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).
  • In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Dirk's Suspiciously Specific Denials, designed to convince his fellow students he has psychic powers, include denying he's "psychosassic". And then denying the word "psychosassic" means anything anyway.
• 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.
• The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series has an entire vocabulary of this. From all of their curse words to terms for weather (including "baggywrinkles"), the books are full of this.
• 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.

Live-Action TV

• Blackadder trying to confuse the writer of the first a well-known dictionary:

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. Blackadder: Every single one, sir? Dr. Samuel Johnson: Every single word, sir! Blackadder: Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafribularities. Dr. Samuel Johnson: What? Blackadder: "Contrafribularities", sir? It is a common word down our way. Dr. Samuel Johnson: Damn! [writes in the book] Blackadder: Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm anispeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.

• • He later goes ballistic when he realises that Baldrick knows a word that's not in the dictionary, namely "sausage".
  • Oh, and Blackadder mentions another Johnson forgot: "aardvark".
  • "I shall return...interfrastically."
• iCarly: In iAm Your Biggest Fan, Carly tells Mandy that they need "fladoodles" for their web show just to get her off their backs. Sam asks what it is, but Carly says that she just made it up.
  • Mandy somehow manages to find a packet of them anyway. Mandy had to go down to the ethnic district to find them however.
• Friends:

Joey: If he doesn't like you, this is all a moo point. Rachel: Huh. A moo point? Joey: Yeah, it's like a cow's opinion. It just doesn't matter. It's moo. Rachel: Have I been living with him for too long, or did that all just make sense?

• • 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.
  • "Spramped" has since become a "real" word, meaning splashing a liquid up against a surface, creating foam and turbulence. For instance, the tradition of tossing a bucket of water against someone's face, or waves hitting a cliff face.
• 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 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.
  • Xzibit has gone on to use this word in episodes of Pimp My Ride .
  • 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.
• Just Shoot Me: Finch and Eliot replace Nina's word-a-day calendar with one filled with Perfectly Cromulent Words right before she goes for a radio interview, in which she uses them all. Link here.
  • The word "ass-tastic" is apparently common in their magazine.
• 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.
• Not the Nine O'Clock News: Gerald, the Talking Gorilla. Uses term 'Flange' for the collective noun of baboons. This one made it to the Ask Oxford website.
  • 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.
• 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.
• News Radio: Beth also invents a word to see if it will catch on ("If my boyfriend acted like that, I would go absolutely bitchcakes"). By the end of the episode, the radio station's owner, Jimmy James, is using it. Perversely, the word actually did catch on, in a small way, in the real world: it's in the Urban Dictionary and everything.
  • 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.
  • Rudy invented the spelling (at random). Cliff invented the definition.
• Deadliest Catch gives us Crabalanche which is what you get when you dump a freshly retrieved container filled with crab onto the sorting table.
• You Have Been Watching:

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'

• In the Stargate SG-1 episode The Fifth Race, Jack begins using seemingly made-up words, albeit without realizing he is doing so. As it turns out, he's speaking Ancient.
• 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, "Whuck...?" from Liz.
    • Another one from Liz: snert, a simultaneous sneeze and fart.
    • Snert may also mean to unsuccessfully suppress a cough, only to have it come out one's nose (typically with a cloud of smoke.)
• In the final episode of Ashes to Ashes, Gene Hunt declares that he can transfer Alex Drake from CID because she is "causing disconsternation amongst her male colleagues." To which Alex immediately replies that "Disconsternation is not a word."
• 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).
• On an episode of How I Met Your Mother, Marshall says he's been using made up words to avoid lying to Lily. "Are you going to quit and work for the NRDC?" "Absatively!"
• In the Escape Slide Parachute episode of MythBusters, the word "criminy" (uttered by Adam) gets this treatment by the narrator, who assumes that Adam just made the word up. ("Criminy" is an actual word, if rather old.)
  • 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 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.
• Fans of Star Trek have created a dictionary of perfectly romulan words.
• 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 (long story). They have a crossword question. She makes up the word "ploddipop" to get them out of the house.

Music

• The Steve Miller Band speaks of the pompatus of love in "The Joker."
  • Interestingly, the term may have been borrowed from The Medallions' "The Letter", which mentioned "the puppetudes of love" (and also coined the term "pizmotality").
• 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

• The flash slideshow on Flickr currently offers the option to "embiggen" pictures that are too small for the screen.
• 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

• In a brief arc in Bloom County, moral guardians were cracking down on the strip for the use of "inappropriate language", citing frequent uses of "the four-letter H-word, the four-letter D-word, and the fourteen-letter S-word". After heavy speculation as to what this latter word is, one of the characters announcing this can only think of "Snugglebunnies"? In the next strip, the two remark on how somehow saying "Snugglebunnies" is bad enough to get the strip cut. Their response: "We have one thing to say to that. Snugglebunnies! Snugglebunnies! Snu-" and the strip gets cut mid-word. Interestingly, later in the strip's run, the word started showing up here and there. It's also on Urban Dictionary.
• A short story arc in Calvin and Hobbes revealed that animals have their own words for the way things smell, such as "snippid" for a brisk autumn day. As it turns out, this was a Batman Gambit by Hobbes to get Calvin to ask, "How do I smell?" To which the answer, of course, is "Terrible!"
• One Get Fuzzy strip from an arc about their new manager had said manager use the words "Dinnerfy" and "Eatification" to describe eating.

Theatre

• The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee combines this with Schrödinger's Gun: a few audience members are selected to compete in the eponymous bee. Most of the words they get are real, but these tend to be thrown out when the play needs to declare a spelling correct/incorrect regardless of the spelling the audience member attempts.
• 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 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 suits her character well.
  • Also from 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.

Qui the Promoter: This is turning out to be an excellent day. Most austipacatious indeed! Spirit Monk: "Austi..." Don't you mean "auspicious?" Qui the Promoter: I apologize if I'm using words beyond your grasp. Very few people can match either the supply or the command of my language. Spirit Monk: Seriously, you're using the wrong words. It makes you sound like a fool. 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...
• Oghren in the Awakening expansion for Dragon Age: Origins does this in the course of drunkenly thanking the Warden Commander for saving him in combat: "There was that guy, and he was all 'Rrrrr!' and I was 'Hrrr!' and then I got hit by an arrow. Then I fell over, and it was 'meep!' But you were there and you were all 'Roaarr!' Ha! Spectaculous!" To which the PC may choose to respond "That's not even a word!"
• Gwonam in Faces of Evil: Squadallah, we are off!
• The Carpenter in Alice: Madness Returns speaks in this manner with some regularity.
• The Murray hopes you were not harmed by his meteoropic entrance, for the Thunder Flop knows neither friend nor foe, only destruction!

Web Animation

• Characters in the Homestar Runner seem to make up a good portion their language on the fly. The bizarre thing is it's 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".

Web Comics

• This is part of Marcus' schtick in 1/0, with a dash of Delusions of Eloquence.
• This Penny Arcade has two examples, one of which is from Real Life.
  • They also introduce us to the much maligned chuwero race.
  • And the gaming industry practice that they describe as the bullshot.
  • Gabe stumbles into a cromulent word while trying to cheat at Scrabble on his smartphone.
• This 8-Bit Theater, which comes complete with the definition of one of the words.
• Yeager in Nodwick managed to invent an Eighth Deadly Sin - which he duly termed Blasphotrociterra-o-rama.
• Malamanteau is a perfectly cromulent word, though Xkcd disagrees.
• Order of the Stick gives us this biollorky example.
• Lampshaded in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja with Dukeicide.

Ben Franklin: Yes. There is a law that means I may have just committed dukeicide. Alt Text: Dukeicide is not a real word.

• MS Paint Adventures makes a Running Gag of applying this to sci-fi gadgets, starting with the Pumpkin Appearifier from Jailbreak. Meanwhile in Homestuck, the otherwise linguistically stringent Jane is quite defensive about the cromulence of the word "shalln't."

"You are so glad that Grimdark is a real word, so that when things like this happen they may be described as such."

• Sluggy Freelance has Millard Dynam Stoop trying to create a Significant Anagram:

Lucius: *gasp* s-s-Slorddly's not even a word! William Wotcherclaws: If the master says it is, then IT IS!

• • The next comic...

Lord Moldypants: Where the hell is Torg? Was anyone watching him? Anyone? William Wotcherclaws: Forgive us! We were all too slorddly, master!

Web Original

• Members of That Guy With The Glasses often combine insults into new words because normal insults just aren't strong enough to deal with the crap they are dealing with.
• In one article for Cracked.com,^{[citation needed]} Michael Swaim coins the term "presturbating" - the act of masturbating to the porn that gets you horny enough to watch the porn that really gets you off, because you're dead inside. (It can also mean "masturbating a priest".)
• Skippys List has examples:

128. "Shpadoinkle" is not a real word.

• In the Slenderfandom, people will often affix "Slender" to the beginning of Slenderman-related words. Also, it's common to refer to that thing he does when he's not really doing anything but he's really scary for some reason as "slendering around".

Western Animation

• The Simpsons is of course the trope namer.
  • The word biggen, however, is a real word, dating back to 1643.
    • Embiggen is not.
  • They also gave us kwyjibo: A fat, balding, North American ape with no chin (and a short temper)."
• SpongeBob SquarePants. When Spongebob accidentally shrinks Squidward with Mermaidman's belt, 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.

Spongebob: Patrick, I don't think Wumbo is a real word... Patrick: Come on... you know! I wumbo. You wumbo. He- she- me... wumbo. Wumbo; Wumboing; We'll have the wumbo; Wumborama; Wumbology: the study of Wumbo. It's first grade, Spongebob! Spongebob: Patrick, I'm sorry I doubted you.

• • Later, a shrunken Mermaidman says "Did you set it to wumbo?"
  • Also showed up in the episode where a health inspector visits the Krusty Krab, but Spongebob and Mr. Krabs suspect he may be an impostor.

Mr. Krabs: We've been duped! Spongebob: Duped! Mr. Krabs: Bamboozled! Spongebob: We've been smeckledorfed! Mr. Krabs: That's not even a word, and I agree with ya!

• Subverted in an episode of South Park. The boys are mad because all the boys from New York know slang terms they don't. They make up a new word just so they could use a word the New York boys didn't know -- and then it turns out that the word "mung" is real.
• A number of cartoons have used the nonsense word "tralfazz". Looney Tunes, The Jetsons, Phineas and Ferb...
• The Critic: Duke Phillips pays Webster's Dictionary to include the word "quzybuk" (meaning "a big problem") in order to win a game of Scrabble. He also paid them to add the word "dukelicious." When he learns that nobody's using it, he mutters "What a duketastrophe."
  • In a late scene, a scientist refers to a situation as "a real quzybuk".
• An example from Futurama:

Joey Mousepad: What if management remains intragnisant? Donbot: From the context, it is clear what you mean.

• • This is because it sounds similar to "Intransigent", a real word meaning "inflexible" or "uncompromising".
• Happens a lot with the Duke of Zill in the Felix the Cat movie. He called. His servant. A numcrut.
• Parodied in Family Guy.

Peter Griffin: A degenerate, am I? Well you're fastezio! See, I can make up words too!.

• An entire episode of Recess revolves around T.J. making up a new word ("whomp", as in, "Man, this whomps!"). He is punished, because most of the adults assume it must be a 'bad' (dirty) word. In truth, he made up the word as a minced oath so he wouldn't get in trouble anymore. After a good deal of irony and courtroom antics, it's decided that the word is up to anyone's interpretation since it was made up, and "Those who think it has a dirty meaning probably have dirty minds to begin with."
• Lampshaded in The Emperors New School:

"Yzmopolis, There's no Stopolis!" "Hey that's not a word" "It is to me!"

• Happened in an episode of Garfield and Friends, where the Buddy Bears try to make the show more educational by interrupting an otherwise "normal" episode to provide trivia on anything that came up in conversation. Irritated, Garfield asked them what they knew about "gazorninplats", and after they're unable to find any information on it, they give up and leave. It backfired at the end of the episode, when G&F was "cancelled" for The Gazorninplat Hour.
  • Another episode featured a Show Within a Show hosted by a character named Fred Gazorninplat. Garfield claims that the host changed his name to get the job and that he used to be called Sam Gazorninplat.
  • 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".

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

• In the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "Look Before You Sleep", Applejack claims to be "the get-alongingest pony you're ever gonna meet!", and Rarity retorts "That's not even a word."
  • Gets a bit of a Call Back in season 2 premiere "The Return of Harmony, Part 1", when the Cutie Mark Crusaders have this exchange (for added fun, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle are Applejack and Rarity's respective little sisters):

Applebloom: Cool! ... If you were actually victory-ful at something. Sweetie Belle: That's not a word! Scootaloo: What are you, a dictionary?

• From Young Justice Robin 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.

Real Life

• 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"
• The word "quiz". A man made a bet that he could invent a word and get it into the local lexicon very quickly. He then went on to scrawl the nonsense word "quiz" on various walls and alleyways around the town (possibly Dublin). Supposedly, the people who had seen it assumed they were being tested for something or another. The Other Wiki claims this is largely apocryphal.
• An accidental example was the word "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?"
• Dr. Seuss invented the word "nerd." (It was a creature in If I Ran The Zoo.)
• Look up back formations on The Other Wiki. Prepare to have your conception of correct usage self-destructinate.
• 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 RUR. It's derived from robota, the Czech word for "forced labor".
• Former President George W. Bush was absolutely renowned for this.
• 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).