Sniglets
Have you ever heard of Sniglets? The person who coined this term, actor/comedian Rich Hall, described them as “any word that doesn’t appear in the dictionary, but should”.
Sniglets featured as part of the satirical comedy show Not Necessarily the News based on the BBC series Not the Nine O’clock News.
Many of the Sniglets are often ‘portmanteau words’ – words that are made up of two words combined together.
Rich Hall published several books on Sniglets, some of which have found there way onto school reading programmes.
Here are some of our favourites:
FURBLING (fer’ bling)
v. Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank even when you are the only person in line.
BRATTLED (brat’ uld)
adj. The unsettling feeling, at a stoplight, that the busload of kids that just pulled up beside you is making fun of you.
SHIRTLOP (shurt’ lahp)
n. The condition of a shirt that has been improperly buttoned.
XIIDIGITATION ( ksi dij i tay’ shun)
n. The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made by deciphering the roman numerals at the end of the credits.
The other day I was talking to a saleswoman who kept insisting that what I wanted to buy would be impossibly expensive. Somehow the two words had become combined in her mind and she kept saying “It will be expensibly”!
If you have any words that you’ve coined, we’d love to hear them.
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Give me more!