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Spaghettification and the Importance of Made Up Words
My Always Unschooled daughters and I have been making up a lot of words lately. It’s fun and it’s evolutionary. This is how words are created. Sometimes current existing words cannot convey the particular meaning we are trying to get across, so we mix and match words that already do exist until we have the perfect word. Sometimes we discover that our made up word is already a word in the dictionary. Sometimes we discover that a word that has the meaning we want already exists, and then it becomes part of our family vocabulary. Whatever the outcome, these conversations help us get to know what the other person is thinking more clearly. This is good!
When I was in school, every English teacher I ever had strongly emphasized that if a word wasn’t in the dictionary (Webster’s, not the OED), we weren’t allowed to use it (neither in speaking nor writing). Yet, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of words have been created every year since before people started keeping track of such things. Words are how we communicate. They are very important. At some point in time, every single word that exists has been made up by someone. While many facial expressions and body language signs are universal, most words are not.
A few of my daughters’ favorite words (that sound made up and were at one point, and still aren’t recognized by any of my spell checkers) include:
- Spaghettification; We like to pretend that this means crashing into an Italian restaurant and getting covered in spaghetti, but we love the real meaning even more.
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious; Thank you, Mary Poppins! We sometimes like to shorten it to superdocious or superalidocious, our own contractions.
- Ginormous; This one is in the dictionary now!
- Quark; This one is so much fun since it started out as a nonsensical word in a poem and is now an important physics term. Of course, Quark is also one of our favorite Star Trek: Deep Space Nine characters, too.
- Smurf; This made-up word, as well as a huge number of other brand names, character names, and product names have made their way into our culture. Who ever heard of an iPod twenty years ago? Now I say that word nearly every day.
Think I’m making up the importance of new words? Check out these sites:
- Merriam-Webster’s sampling of new words in their 2007 edition
- CNN.com’s “Pluto’s revenge: ‘Word of the Year’ award“
- Wikipedia on “Oxford English Dictionary” (there are thousands of new words added to each new addition)
- Unwords.com (Dictionary of made-up words.)
So, yes, please tell my 5th grade teacher that “ain’t” is a word. Doubt me? Look it up on dictionary.com. 
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