by Juel Iwaasa
My mother has related to others that she thought I would have been a good lawyer. She said I could justify or rationalize just about anything. But I think what she really meant is that from the time I was young I was pretty good at lying [i]. She has often cited the time I straight-faced denied knowing where my brother was (he was hiding under my bed [ii] when my mother asked if I had seen him (she was brandishing the stained teflon spoon of tie-dying and bottom whacking[iii].
While I did not pursue the professional life of a lawyer, fibber, or con-man, I do have a confession (of a related sort) to make. You see, I like to make up words and pass them off as authentic English. When I was in high school English, I would insert made up [iv] words into my essays and reports to see if I would get caught [v]. This practice continued into college, then through a two-year mission to Japan, and even into graduate school.
During my time in Japan, however, this practice of vocabularic subterfuge took a different turn. I was corresponding [vi] with a college friend. She would put perfume or lipstick lip marks on her letters in an attempt to get me teased by other missionaries [vii]. So I responded once by writing to tell her that the other missionaries and I agreed she was the most extantiliantocious person we knew. Extantiliantocious is a word I made up. It means extravagant, extroverted, outlandish, and perhaps a bit precocious. Had she known the meaning, my friend would have taken it as a compliment.
But what happened was better. My friend wrote back demanding the definition. She related that she had asked the definition from almost every person she knew after searching in several dictionaries proved unsuccessful. It was driving her crazy. Ah sweet (though friendly) revenge.
Extantiliantocious is a real word in my family now. We have other words too, made by friends and relatives, or gleaned from foreign languages and media that we like.[viii] For example, my oldest son came up with slithy (the title of this article). It means deceptive, misleading, yet kind of cool. My son would say me trying to pass off Juel words as authentic was slithy. Marketing gurus have categorized what my family has done as tribal behavior.
My thought is that it is time for WVC to embrace its inner tribalness and start developing a unique tribal dialect[ix]. We already have a tribal name for the college: 5th Street U. Here are a few other (from both my family and WVC students) tribal words I’ve collected.
Confuzzled (confused, fuzzy minded, and puzzled. I’m confuzzled.) –by Jenaesha (oldest daughter) and her friends
Badunkled (stumped and confused. I’m bedunkled. You totally badunked me. I’m so badunkified…) -by Hillary (choir member and nursing student)
Speluculus (spectacularly awesome. That’s so speluculus!) –by Chrissy (choir member and music major)
Do you have a word that is awesome, but not found in Webster’s? Why not submit it (with a definition, example of the word used in a sentence, background on the term) to 5th Street U? If it’s really good, we’ll feature it here and you will be famous (sort of), perhaps even immortalized through your word being used by future generations of the 5th Street U tribe!
[i] I was going to write fibbing, but that feels like I would be lying.
[ii] I was sitting on the bed at the time.
[iii] The 1970s, Teflon spoon was the gold standard in assisted discipline when I was young. It was the perfect length, weight and shape to create maximum, non-permanent sting on a young man’s bottom. My brother and I feared the Teflon spoon.
[iv] Ex. philantacious (having an inordinate zeal for philanthropic endeavors)
[v] Wonderfully and disappointingly, I never did.
[vi] For young people, that means writing letters.
[vii] Missionaries are, for a large part, 19-21 year old boys who are supposed to 1) focus on missionary work and 2) not focus on girls.
[viii] I highly recommend Joss Whedon’s Firefly, and Blackadder the Third: Dictionary.
[ix] Tribal dialect sounds so legitimate when compared to the term slang.