Invented words and phrases (by me) - a small collection

Sometimes the existing language won't do and you have to create a new word, or one suggests itself. A lot of the time it's just recombining prefixes, infixes and suffixes but occasionally one that I quite like emerges. I'm sure you have your own, here are mine. If you tell me yours I might add a section at the bottom for them :)

While you're listening enjoy the excellent poomphing sounds of Groove Armada's Chicago.



Apostroppy - people who get extra miffed with misplaced apostrophe's (see what I did there!). Inspired by @PenguinGalaxy's misspelling of 'apostrope'

Damplitude - a measure of how hard it's raining, from how high the drops bounce on the pavement

DNAouement - the conclusion of a Jeremy Kyle show

Flim-flammable - a phrase looking for a use, without much hope of a resolution unless there are some good fire myths it might be applied to

Lipidome / lipidomics - I came up with this in 2000 after attending a conference on lipid chemistry. Around that time proteome (and later metabolome) was all the rage I think and I, being the only lipid chemist in the department, jokingly suggested the lipidome - which has since become a real word. I doubt I was the first to think of it! [Edit - I can confirm it was in the academic literature before I 'invented' it independently.] The lipid-ome is the full complement of all lipids (eg cell membrane lipids).

Malheureuse legumes - reaching for a description for poisonous mushrooms during an O Level French oral exam in which I had to role-play the sister of a boy who'd eaten them in the forest. I'd forgotten the word 'champignon'. Fortunately I never had to use it as the examiner used the correct word in the preliminary introductions to the role play.

Quantumacious - the absolute determination, despite no evidence or even evidence to the contrary, that your particularly brand of quackery can be explained by 'quantum' something or other

Monthabetically - my efforts to solve the fact that the months of the year are not alphabetic (and a column with January and May in it won't naturally re-order by calendar date) so I've renamed them Anuary, Bebruary, Charm, Dapril, Ey, Fune, Guly, Haugust, Iptember, Joctober, Movember, Zecember for my own filing purposes. These days I tend to just go with Bruary for Bebruary, there's no need to overdo it.

'ping it me-wards' - please send me a copy. I don't really know what I was thinking there

Teledelegates - people attending a conference solely via the Twitter hashtag

Timeato - my preferred rendering of Pomodoro, the productivity tool named after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. 

Mulling over how I can monetise the observation that another word for Pomodoro (as in https://t.co/JpsQ4WLp5y) is Timeato ;)

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) September 14, 2014

A 'timeato'

Whirritation - persistent helicopters overhead (to be honest I do quite like the sound, especially if Chinooks though they never seem to hover sadly), often heard early on Sunday mornings at the London Marathon which runs through bits of Blackheath near where I live. Those can be quite whirritating.