The Science of Silly Words

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Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK
This article from today's Guardian made me smile.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/26/from-whong-to-quingel-what-makes-a-word-funny

I'm sure that we all have favourite silly words. Diphthong sounds a lot ruder than it is, while dongle is always good for a smirk - such as when innocently saying things such as "I recharged my dongle" or "I dropped my dongle down the back of the sofa."

Scrumping is something that I did a lot of as a child, as there was an abandoned orchard nearby, and the word is pleasingly silly and naughty, inviting emphasis when said - and I wouldn't feel a wazzock for doing so.

Do the Colonists have any favourites?
 
I find satisfaction in certain place-names, not because they're silly, they're not, but because of their intrinsic cadence: Shenandoah, Schleswig Holstein, Vladivostok...etc...

I did a lot of childhood scrumping too, by the way, but the orchard in question was certainly not abandoned...;)

I grew up in the county of Hertfordshire, just to the north of London. There was a hamlet near Buntingford which used to be known as Much-Throcking-In-The-Wold, and the inhabitants referred to themselves as Throckers!
 
I don't know. I usually chuckle at Walla Walla, Washington. It could be that I watched too many "Looney Toons" cartoons as a kid.
I went to school in Schleswig...Iowa not the one in Germany (it was named after the one in Germany) and Holstein wasn't far from Schleswig.
 
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Well I've been to Walla Walla, NSW, not Washington. I'll have to pop up there sometime, so I can say I've been to both! And yes I've been to Wagga Wagga too, it's kinda near Walla Walla, southern NSW actually ;)
 
Well, I grew up near Blue Ball, Pennsylvania, which we kids always tittered about. But words? I've always been fond of "discombobulate". And when I first came here I was struck with Maori words--how rude they sound in English--because the letters "wh" together make the sound "f", and many words start with "whaka-" (e.g.: whakapapa is your geneology, whakarata is to pacify; whakarara is a parallelogram...but when an English speaker hears them, they can have quite different meanings...)
 
And Whanagrei (like fon'ga'ra). Gotta love the Maori language, just not how they rushed into making a Maori alphabet without an 'F' ! ;) Still, what do you expect from a bunch of Pakehas anyway...lol
 
And Whanagrei (like fon'ga'ra). Gotta love the Maori language, just not how they rushed into making a Maori alphabet without an 'F' ! ;) Still, what do you expect from a bunch of Pakehas anyway...lol

I suspect that when Europeans first arrived here, the "wh" translation was a better fit for the sound than "f". The language was nearly wiped out, and has been highly anglicised since then.
 
I like the word copacetic, which I came across in James Lee Burke's novels, before living in Atlanta, Georgia for three years. I was delighted to hear people using it there. It's definitely an Americanism, and I like throwing it into conversations as most Brits wonder what the hell I'm saying!
 
My dad used to say 'gopping', to mean something nasty. Ie. 'that's just gopping!' It must be an Essex thing!
 
Here's one I found out last night. Apparently Americans haven't heard the word 'chook'?? Seriously I had to explain to my mother-in-law that it means chickens ;)
 
Hey does anyone else call ice cream 'oakie'? Or is it just my granddad?
 
How about gockies for eggs? Is that a PA Dutch thing? That's what I grew up calling them.

And yes, Alistair, Americans don't know what a chook is. But it took me all of 10 seconds to switch from chicken to chook when we moved here--great word!
 
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