FUN WITH WORDS

Below is a sampling of entrees from one of the Washington Post’s most popular annual contests, the Neologism Contest, in which contestants are asked to create new words with various restrictions. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

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CHANGE A WORD BY ONE LETTER

Guiltar: A musical instrument whose strings are pulled by your mother.

Eruditz: A philosophy professor who can’t figure out how to work the copying machine.

Skilljoy: The would-be friend who’s a bit better than you at everything.

Sparadigm: A model panhandler.

SPELL A WORD BACKWARD:

Nword: Something that gets you in really deep trouble. 

Onisac: A dark, often smoke-filled chamber in which elderly Homo sapiens deposit their nest eggs before dying. 

WORDS ENDING IN -ION

Errudition: Comical misuse of big words. “Madam, your dress looks positively superfluous on you tonight,” he said with amazing errudition.

Percycution: Giving your child a name he will hate for the rest of his life.

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WORDS CONTAINING A BLOCK OF THREE CONSECUTIVE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET

Coughin: A small enclosure designed especially for smokers.

PORTMANTEAU (OVERLAPPING) WORDS

Treadmillstone: The unused home gym that keeps staring at you.

Crapplause: A polite but unenthusiastic expression of approval.

PALINDROME TERM

AHA HAHA: When you finally get the joke.

MOVE A WORD’S FIRST LETTER TO THE END

Carecrows: Women who are so devoted to their men that they frighten them away.

13-LETTER WORDS

Typochondriac: A paranoid proofreader.

COMBINE THE BEGINNING AND END OF TWO WORDS FROM THE DAY’S PAPER

Prob-solutely: A definite maybe.

Ignorial: A monument that nobody visits.

FUN