Made-Up Words Your Family Uses

Most families have their own sayings or terms that no one else uses, same with mine.

Most of them are quite standard; cuggling = a cross between hugs and cuddles, Britching = scratching an itchy back, and Fanky = a term used for something that is both funky smelling and manky. For example if you found yourself squashed below a less than fragrant person of questionable hygiene strap hanging on the train or bus, you'd have been stuck in someones fanky armpit.

Other terms aren't as easily explained. In our house, we used to have an almost constant supply of Freddos - those small chocolate bars in the shape of a frog - the perfect size for a cup of tea or small treat. My dad has always referred to Freddos as Frog Bastards. Nobody knows why, not even my dad. I had a multipack of frog bastards in my work refridgerator and asked a colleague if he wanted a frog bastard with his coffee. He didn't, for some reason.

Another word used by us all is Blempt. If some minor crime has been committed you do not want to be the person on whom it gets blempt, because somehow that's much worse than being blamed. I used it recently in the company of Americans but easily convinced them it was a British colloquialism.

One I use all the time is Blunch. You can keep your 'brunch' nonsense, in my world a cross between breakfast and lunch is blunch and always will be. In fact, I had a small sandwich for my blunch today.

Lots of kids have trouble pronouncing the word hospital, but no one in my family did because we called it the Hostabuilding. The hospital is actually inside the hostabuilding though most people don't know that, only the select few like myself.

My parents didn't smack us but would refer to a smack on the butt as a Honcho, because it was a belt to the haunches that made you go 'Oh!'. Which, if you think about it, makes a bit of sense.

Any makey-uppy words peculiar to your family that the Oxford Dictionary could consider for inclusion in future editions?

The Pheasant2

"Glocky" - meaning bad or of poor quality; from the Mam's side of the family, no idea what the genesis of it is.

"Mam, can I have an eclair?"
"Those are for the guests - you can have one of the glocky ones that didn't rise properly"

Jrop

Vietnamese whirls instead of Viennese Whirls.

Gur/Chester Cake is a fly's graveyard

My younger sister is affectionately called Smelly and She calls me Stinky. Although it's interchangeable. Also known as the smelly or stinky one.
I'm 41 and she's 34 so we are very mature

frag420

jesusmaryandjosephdowhatyouaretold

frag420

Jrop wrote: »

Vietnamese whirls instead of Viennese Whirls.

Gur/Chester Cake is a fly's graveyard

My younger sister is affectionately called Smelly and She calls me Stinky. Although it's interchangeable. Also known as the smelly or stinky one.
I'm 41 and she's 34 so we are very mature

mature what, cheese?

frag420

frag420 wrote: »

jesusmaryandjosephdowhatyouaretold

My grans favourite version of that is "Jesus, Mary, Joseph...and the donkey!"

You know it's bad when the donkey gets a mention.

DEFTLEFTHAND

A few on my mothers side would to refer to toilet tissue as 'arse paper'. Never really heard that expression anywhere else before.

My siblings and I had a little language that we spoke. We were all pretty close in age.

Jrop

frag420 cheddar

DEFTLEFTHAND

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

A few on my mothers side would to refer to toilet tissue as 'arse paper'. Never really heard that expression anywhere else before.

My siblings and I had a little language that we spoke. We were all pretty close in age.

We call toilet paper 'The Times'. If you run out, you call someone to pass through another copy of The Times. My grandfather was the originator of that one, having declared The Times as only being of wipe-worthy quality.

My cousin and I have a sort of mumbling language of our own, I thought we'd grown out of it but we're often told to speak like normal people when we fall into using it.

diomed

Smell of Benjy
... a combined reference to the farmyard and a character in The Riordans.

Jrop

diomed we say a bang of benjy

diomed

diomed wrote: »

Smell of Benjy
... a combined reference to the farmyard and a character in The Riordans.

My mother calls beanie hats 'Benjys'. I don't know where it comes from though.

inna981

baagingo

Don't know if its a Carlow/Kilkenny word but I only hear it from my granny.

"Oh baagingo, look at the cut of him"

Jrop

Candie I'd guess Crossroads, Benjy in crossroads always wore a woollen beanie

I'll head to YouTube to see what that is!

ectoraige

My wife's family uses "bing" as another word for a fart, no idea of it's genesis but makes my chuckle whenever Microsoft's search engine is mentioned.

Mikados are known as fanny biscuits, because they are.

I forgot another one I still use. When I was small, biscuits were biccy-wiccies. Obviously this is just silly baby talk and you don't want to be calling them that in adulthood. So I don't, I just call them wiccies now.

_Dara_

Dop - a cross between don’t and stop. Used by my mother when she was particularly frazzled

Woozie (the oo pronounced like wood) - if my parents were carrying a shopping bag and they didn’t want us to know the contents (ie. if it was something like contraception) and we asked what was in the bag, they’d say “a woozie”. That was understood code for “none of your business! We’re never going to tell you so stop asking!” We respected it! :eek: I think the idea of using a nonsense word was that we couldn’t picture what that was so it made it seen nonexistent almost.

RiderOnTheStorm

My son invented a word for his genitals, after a football hit him there ... "Oh, my oochie-moochie" . Its surprisingly satisfying to say.

And one from my dad.....
Yuchie Da.... Its a welsh word for "good health" afaik, but my dad uses it to mean something is awful or "yuchy"

HelgaWard

Dizzyaster, a disaster caused by dizzy behavior!

We sometimes use made up names for places, like Mickey Marbh for Stillorgan, Ballinaquick for Ballinasloe!

SusieBlue

We had a bunch of "craffers" in our house, growing up.

A craffer is a sibling, usually younger, who would give you a few slaps/shoves for no reason. Then, when you got annoyed enough to hit back, they'd go running out to Mam pretending to cry, but actually half laughing, just to get you in trouble.

These little drama queens were hence forth known as craffers in our house.
"Mam, that's not fair that I'm in trouble, he isn't even hurt he's just craffing!!!!"

fieldofsheep

Hmmm, the only one that springs to mind is the 'pressy-buttony-thing' - the remote control for the TV 8-)

MyStubbleItches

Ponny. A word for a container that doesn't have a name of its own. For instance a homemade wooden box full of nails, screws, fuses, tools, etc. Funnily enough, my in-laws pet name for my wife since she was a child is also Ponny. Since I explained why I find it so funny she hates it.

Homple is another one, same meaning as Gwawlful. It's the amount of firewood we could carry in our arms. 'Go out and bring in a homple/gwawlful of blocks there'.

fieldofsheep

fieldofsheep wrote: »

Hmmm, the only one that springs to mind is the 'pressy-buttony-thing' - the remote control for the TV 8-)

Think you mean the pointy thingy.

downwesht

We bought 2 pieces of furniture to fit out a spare room,a sideboard and a toy cabinet.Kids were small and christened them the shermit and the bellreffy!!To this day they are known as that!

mfceiling

Father always has his steak with chips, a side saddle (salad) and musharooms. Always had an "a" in the middle of it.

sligojoek

My grandmother used to say "The hooky knacky thing" for any kind of clasp or fastening device.

RainMakerToo

Jrop wrote: »

Candie I'd guess Crossroads, Benjy in crossroads always wore a woollen beanie

That was "Benny"...

thisistough

Squiffy- that dodgy stomach feeling when you’re not sure if you’re about to throw up. Generally associated with being hungover and trying not to move in case you anger it

BeepBeep67

diomed wrote: »

Smell of Benjy
... a combined reference to the farmyard and a character in The Riordans.

Smell of Pablo it was changed to in our house after a Spanish holiday.

FanadMan

Bokie was used in our house as a term for a fool....."Ah shut up ya bokie". Think it was from a character in the Dandy comic when my father was a kid.

MyStubbleItches

thisistough wrote: »

Squiffy- that dodgy stomach feeling when you’re not sure if you’re about to throw up. Generally associated with being hungover and trying not to move in case you anger it

We have an Englishman in our village. He uses this to describe being half pissed. 'I was actually quite squiffy last night'.

PLL

Huggle: hybrid of cuddle and hug.

Dropbox: Bedside locker/cabinet

Warm: Dressing Gown

fima

‘Brinner’ when you would have a fried breakfast for dinner. I think it happened once when my Mam was away and henceforth after that it was referred to as brinner.

pickarooney

Foo-faw is a woeful mess, possibly a corruption of faux Pas

Fung is a hair clip

Keisha07

My nan refers to the remote control as the zapper, the chip pan was the grease pot, gross seeing it in type one of the kids called a code brown when in the loo and needing toilet roll, that has stuck.

Cee-Jay-Cee

Scritch an itch that needs to be scratched or to be scraped.

Tuckling- tucking in at night.

Floopla is a head over heels tumble.

And for some unknown reason Nutella is called ‘chewy jam’ in our house.

HalloweenJack

Hiceing was a type of messing my uncles used to get up to when they were younger and my granda came up with the word which my ma would use for general messing about.

Both my brtoher and I came up with our languages as kids because we both had speech problems. I grew out of mine and I don't really remember any of it but my brother still uses his. We have a whole vocabulary that he uses that only those of us in the family know what they mean.

fima

fima wrote: »

‘Brinner’ when you would have a fried breakfast for dinner. I think it happened once when my Mam was away and henceforth after that it was referred to as brinner.

This is a good one. I mean, it's no blunch, but it's a good one .

lukesmom

Mam used to call us all ******s when we were kids in a jokey affectionate way before it became a gay term.

heldel00

Foosies - sweet thing
piblo - willy
a hum of the buck - bad smell
Chingo - chewing
a crack - fart

All I can think of for now but no doubt more will come to me.

Colonel Claptrap

inna981 wrote: »

baagingo

Don't know if its a Carlow/Kilkenny word but I only hear it from my granny.

"Oh baagingo, look at the cut of him"

By any chance is she saying By Jingo?

As in the colloquial British term that gives jingoism its name?

bottlebrush

We used to call pooh 'stack'

corner of hells

Arsebangs for farts also code Brown for a dump.

DanMurphy

HalloweenJack wrote: »

Hiceing was a type of messing my uncles used to get up to when they were younger and my granda came up with the word which my ma would use for general messing about.

Both my brtoher and I came up with our languages as kids because we both had speech problems. I grew out of mine and I don't really remember any of it but my brother still uses his. We have a whole vocabulary that he uses that only those of us in the family know what they mean.

Hiecing was what donkeys did when they were unharnessed after a day under the cart and let free into the field.
They would buck-jump and kick their heels up and roll on their backs! We called all that hiecing down Limerick way.:D

fussyonion

Easi-Singles was always (and still is) called "wobbly cheese" growing up.
My other half said they used to call it "skin-graft cheese".

I used to eat cheese on crackers as my "supper" most nights as a kid and my Mam would ask if I wanted "roofs" on them, meaning a cracker on top of the cheese so it was a sandwich.

My fella calls Coconut Creams "hairy biscuits" and Kimberleys are "spring sprongers".
And Findus Crispy Pancakes are "poo-poos".

HalloweenJack

DanMurphy wrote: »

Hiecing was what donkeys did when they were unharnessed after a day under the cart and let free into the field.
They would buck-jump and kick their heels up and roll on their backs! We called all that hiecing down Limerick way.:D

Well, he's a Tipp man and my gran's from Limerick so probably comes from that.

What my uncles used to was to lie down with their heads at either end of the couch and start churning their legs at each other in the middle.

Crea

Nicky-noo-noo for female genitals.
In the Flowers for having ones period.

Mainly girls in my house so very female oriented slang.

Crea

Mikado biscuits are Jammy Fannies (think about it!)

Jrop

Janey macaroni and spagehtti hoops to express surprise

Arne_Saknussem

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

A few on my mothers side would to refer to toilet tissue as 'arse paper'. Never really heard that expression anywhere else before.

My siblings and I had a little language that we spoke. We were all pretty close in age.

Hole Roll