Whose word is it anyway?

[aendr]

What words or phrases are there which you use (or used to use) but wouldn't be widely understood? They may be dialect words which are peculiar to the region in which you live, or they may have been coined by your family or friends. Existing English words count, if they have a special meaning when used by your family.

lephetone n Telephone. Also, lephetony, lephetone call and occasionally leffy for TV (telly). It's a family thing, but may occur in other families?
gramma n Any elderly female relative or friend of the family, older than your parents. Might be spelt graemmadh, but that would be cheating.
meols n Sand dunes, from the anglo-saxon. Pronounced to rhyme with bells.
Walla n Pronounced "wally" it actually means a Welsh person. It doesn't have the negative connotations of an idiot. The plural is wallas and I come from wallas eig - the isle of the Welsh. I don't use it much outside my home area because Wallas tend not to like being called Wallies.
sproing n This is the noun to describe a sprung (is sprung a real word?) spring - i.e. one pulled beyond its elasticity so it's deformed and has opened out spirals. You can also have sproinging, which is a more severe type of springing a spring, e.g. "that sprung spring is really rather sproinged" or "that's a well sproinged spring." It's also a nice word to say. Sproing. Sproing. So we also use it as a kind of "tumtitum" silence filler occasionally.

I'm not sure if this quite counts, but...
scouse n No, not the accent, the dish. Those of us from the puddle are actually called after this dish, usually involving leftover meat and gravy and anything else that is vaguely edible from the week's meals. Posh scouse is made with ingredients actually bought for the dish and is fake. Blind scouse today is the vegetarian or vegan option - but it was actually because there wasn't any actual meat leftover, but might have some meat gravy or dripping in. Anyway, a lot of people don't seem to know that scouse or labscouse, the food, existed a long time before the people or accent. Labscouse is a sailor's food, though it has changed a fair bit to become the familiar scouse fare of Liverpool.

I'm sure I have lots more - hsenag?

(wonders if she should mention saliva tower)

Sproing!

Comments

I learned this poem when I was about 7. Who knew it would be useful?

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Eletelephony, Laura E Richards

Once there was an elephant
Who tried to use the telephant
No no! I mean an elephone who tried to use the telephone.
(Dear me, I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)

Howe'er it was he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk
The more he tried to get it free
The louder buzzed the telephee
(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong.)

[aendr.livejournal.com]

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