Over the years I’ve heard people use made-up words that I like (either because they’re funny or useful) so I decided to collect them here for everyone’s enjoyment.  I didn’t invent these myself except as noted.

Ruint : I wrote a post about this one!

Gravitoward : a shorter version of “gravitate toward”

Turtling : This is what kids do when you are in a hurry and trying to get out of the house but they won’t get moving.  (I invented this one).

See also, Words I like and hate

As you’ve probably noticed, I have a thing for language.  There are some words I like and words I hate, so I wanted to collect them here.

Words I like
interlineated
delimiter
reconcile
depleted
irrevocable
precarious
hungriness as used by Garbage

subtends (as in subtends an angle) z.B. a parsec or parallax second is the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arc second.

neologism.  I didn’t know there was a word for that.  I read this later and had to look up the definition again! (“A newly coined word or expression”).
barrel (verb, as in “Winter storm barrels into the midwest”).  I think this is so funny.  Steph called it a playfulish word.

There are also some words I hate.
temblor (synonym for earthquake).  I think I will nominate this to the LSSU List of Banished Words. (6/18/13 An earthquake by any other name… is still an earthquake.)
viral
most of the words on lssu list.
comptroller
pupil to mean student.
wean
vet (as verb)
noshing
materiel
couture.  This might be the most pretentious word in the English language.
tapped, with the direct object of a person, to mean seeking someone’s expert advice.
swag and swagger
dearth (wtf does this mean?)
gutwrenching
potable
comfy (thanks Sherry)
drops, in the sense of an album being released.  I think “rises” would be better, although both are just wrong.
colonel  (how does this get pronounced like ‘kernel’?)

I also dislike words that are exceptions to English language that you have to memorize and that lead to ambiguity, like
flammable/inflammable, valuable/invaluable.
Why can’t these be consistent, like… consistent/inconsistent or expensive/inexpensive?  WTF?

Didn’t get in to the banished words list, so here’s another nomination.

Word to banish:

“us to get pregnant”

Reason:

Oh, if it were only possible for couples who were wishing for “us to get pregnant” to both get pregnant.

I was at the mall earlier, and saw a guy using a pushbroom, sweeping up pennies and algae into a pile where the water in the fountain used to be. I’d venture a guess that’s not within spec on the coin counting machine, but it was funny!

Also, some funny things my kids have said:

Jeremy didn’t want an alarm clock: “Alarm clocks distort me”

He used to refer to gibbous and full moons as a Loud Moon.

I fail to understand how “pop culture” writers can use the word “inimitable” (is this a contraction for in (un?) imitatable (sic) without the apostrophic contraction), a word that someone even as literate as me has to contextually bluff that I know it and hope for the best, and at the same time pervert the language to say “an historical” because people are too lazy-talking to put the accent on the hard ‘h’.

Getting that into the MoS, imho, is a political feat akin to a unanimous worldwide adoption of the Kyoto Convention. I wonder who {verb1, verb2, verb3, …} someone or who knew who to pull that off.

“An historical…” is an abomination to humankind. “An honor” and “a historical record” are different. More dumbing down of the language, like the lately-accepted interchangeability of the very different terms “I’m anxious to…” and “I’m… eager to…”! I don’t know where that manual that everyone is forced to use is printed, but I would venture a guess left coast, and it was an intentional attack on extraordinarily literate 80s graduates, just like the deletion of the last comma in a comma-delimited list (which, I’ve been told is called an “Oxford comma”). Every time I see that, it annoys me, 10 years in, 50 more to go. I’d like to recast the sentences that comprise their job descriptions.

I owe my dear friend April “Apes” Kincaid a debt of gratitude for teaching me that great word. I don’t really know how to define it, but I can describe it by example and I know when something is ruint. It doesn’t mean ruined or match any of the urban dictionary definitions. Try this example that just happened and made me want to write about it:

So I have this “sort of” friend who calls from time to time, but she really just wants to pump me for information about life updates and gossip about people we know in common…. she doesn’t actually want to talk to me, and we don’t have much in common, and she is always elusive, doesn’t ever tell the truth (then wonders why I don’t believe a word she says), never answers a question straight up (changes the subject or talks about something unrelated).  ‘She doesn’t take calls / she only makes calls’ [Killola reference], and she only calls me while driving (probably when no one else answered and I’m the last resort) then brags about some dickhead guy she hangs out with and…. never mind. I want to hear about that about as much as I enjoyed listening to everyone throwing up on South Park last night. Then, when I didn’t answer, she left a voicemail that was just four seconds of that farting noise that kids make. What did *I* do?!

Ruint!

One definition I wrote that’s close but not quite on is this:

“Ruint” (adj.) pathetic and without foundation; irrelevant; consisting only of meaningless diversion or distraction.

That definition came to me after reading a somewhat nonsensical article on Yahoo news about scientists who allegedly cooled atoms below absolute zero (?).

Like most of their articles, stupid people who can’t spell wrote completely worthless comments, references to politics, Obama, whose fault it is, that sort of thing.  Ruint!

I wrote in a reply to one of those comments:
Are you right?  Who knows.  But I thought this was supposed to be a science article.  It’s definitely not a politics article.  Right or wrong, these comments are off-topic and stupid.  No wonder everyone who wants news and can spell is looking for a better source.
I propose the introduction of a new word into English for your comment:
“Ruint” (adj.): pathetic and without foundation; irrelevant; consisting only of meaningless diversion or distraction.

It’s different than “annoying”, which would be like how I was just now making a drink and putting ice into my glass from a container, carefully avoiding a small bug that had flown in there, but observing when my was glass was full of ice, the bug was unaccounted for. [No, I didn’t just drink it you fools! I threw it all out and got new ice after washing everything!]

A person can’t feel “ruint”.  In fact, usually “ruint” applies only to situations and actions that people do, rather than the people themselves (like in the above example).  Here’s another really good example:

An ice storm froze my car window and caused it to detach from the regulator and fall down inside the door (letting a lot of rain in as well).  On Jan. 7, 2014, on the coldest day of the past year, I spent many hours cleaning the garage to get the car in, and worked off and on for the next two days tearing the door apart to fix this.  The procedure is very involved: I had to follow 23 steps to remove the door panel and more than 50 steps in this great online tutorial for fixing the window problem.  Although I got it fixed, just as I was finishing up, of course I had to get injured.  I cut my hand down near the wrist… out of all that, when I was cleaning the window.  Ruint!  Hit some stupid sharp edge doing the most mundane step in the entire procedure.

Now you know what Ruint means.

And that I like South Park. Don’t miss Grey Dawn (old people driving! eeeek!), Cat Orgy, Scott Tenorman Must Die, Gnomes (underpants gnomes!), Cow Days (“I Declare Shenanigans”).