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Examples

  • In that sense it shares a common mission with lingofactory: to seed the world with madeupical words.

    We Are Not Alone 2007

  • Labels: frostitute, lingofactory, madeupical, neologism posted by John McGrath @ 4: 46 PM 1 Comments

    Archive 2007-11-01 2007

  • In that sense it shares a common mission with lingofactory: to seed the world with madeupical words.

    We Are Not Alone 2007

  • Labels: frostitute, lingofactory, madeupical, neologism posted by John McGrath @ 4: 46 PM

    We Are Not Alone 2007

  • Labels: frostitute, lingofactory, madeupical, neologism posted by John McGrath @ 4: 46 PM

    We Are Not Alone 2007

  • In that sense it shares a common mission with lingofactory: to seed the world with madeupical words.

    Archive 2007-11-01 2007

  • Have you also joined the cult of ninja madeupical etymologists and/or piratical madeupical etymologists?

    phosphenes 2009

  • I am shocked, shocked, shocked, I tell you, to think that anyone might believe for an instant that I was guilty of contributing madeupical facts or scientifically implausible theories to Wordie.

    phosphenes 2009

  • In that sense it shares a common mission with lingofactory: to seed the world with madeupical words.

    We Are Not Alone 2007

  • I am shocked, shocked, shocked, I tell you, to think that anyone might believe for an instant that I was guilty of contributing madeupical facts or scientifically implausible theories to Wordie.

    Madeupical: Avauntular seanahan 2007

Comments

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  • Because we've all been saying this word, and nobody had it listed. It's totally real, by the way.

    September 13, 2007

  • Of course it's real! After all, I made it up, and I'm real! Case closed.

    Besides, no one ever puts madeupical words on Wordie. Ever.

    September 13, 2007

  • Archive note: the very first mention of madeupical is at nounal. So in ages hence, all will see Wordie brilliance.

    October 16, 2007

  • I just learned the word sniglet, which is a synonym for madeupical, and equally fun to say.

    October 26, 2007

  • I think sniglets were "invented" (maybe not) by Rich Hall, a 1980s-era comedian who used to be on Saturday Night Live. He put out a bunch of books of sniglets and stuff. Some of my favorites (that I still remember) were:

    motspur--the one wheel on a shopping cart that won't go the right way

    essoasso--a person who avoids a red light by cutting through a corner gas station

    blurfle--to be speaking loudly over music, as at a dance club, only to have the music stop suddenly just as you're saying something like "... testicles laminated!"

    October 26, 2007

  • We need a pronunciation guide: this is my first time looking at this page, and I'd expected the pronunciation to be mad-yuu'pi-cal.

    November 8, 2007

  • But it's a madeupical word, VanishedOne--how can we have a pronunciation guide for a madeupical word? ;-)

    November 8, 2007

  • Consult the originator?

    How can you not have a pronunciation guide for a word? Even if it's 'uncertain', on the model of Cthulhu, that's still information that permits a guide.

    November 8, 2007

  • "Made. Up. Ickle." :-P

    November 8, 2007

  • There we are: it can be done. Cheers. (Though I do like the Hellenic-sounding one.)

    November 8, 2007

  • The originator is me. Uselessness is correct. And I was just joking. See the wink down there? ;-)

    And Cthulhu had nothing to do with it; believe me.

    November 8, 2007

  • Yes, I know you were joking; and I was taking it mock-seriously. Maybe I should use more emoticons, but on this of all sites...

    November 9, 2007

  • Ah, mock-seriously, you say! Now I understand. Apologies if I came off sounding snippy. :-)

    November 9, 2007

  • Don't worry about it; misunderstandings just happen sometimes.

    November 9, 2007

  • Particularly hilarious ones.

    November 9, 2007

  • Got that right. :-)

    November 9, 2007

  • The other night I dreamt I was reading an obscure novel from nineteen-o-something. In a footnote of this novel, or it might have been non-fiction a la William James, I saw the word "madeupickal", and thought "a-ha! This will be a killer citation!" Then I woke up.

    November 22, 2007

  • Haha! I actually got the opportunity to use madeupical in a business meeting yesterday... unfortunately my coworkers didn't exactly get the reference. :-P

    November 22, 2007

  • Ah, what do they know, uselessness? ;-> Yarb, I can't believe you dreamed about madeupickal in its variant 19th-century spelling! You must be wordieing too hard.

    November 24, 2007

  • The role of madeupical words in the quality of fiction writing was recently the subject of an xkcd comic panel (be sure not to miss the mouse rollover text). This panel was discussed today on the linguistics blog Language Log.

    October 10, 2008

  • This word is Wordie's frindle.

    November 23, 2008

  • *bows*

    November 25, 2008

  • I would just like to remind everyone that, before there was madeupical, there was madeupatory.

    As the conversation for the ages below will corroborate. Ahh, but I was just a Wordie neophyte then:

    chicken catch-a-tory

    I miss uselessness.

    December 31, 2008

  • That's true, sionnach. Madeupatory came first, and it was made up right here (see comments), whereas madeupical was coined at nounal.

    Thank you for remembering. I do miss the verbal sparring with The Uselessness. :-)

    January 1, 2009

  • Ok, confession time. Who's been googling:

    madeupical -site:wordie.org

    ?

    Very curious!

    June 4, 2009

  • Wow! You can use it to track Wordies' lives outside Wordie!

    June 4, 2009

  • Uav! Actually, this sentence popped out at me: "madeupical etymology isn't defined yet."

    *rubs hands in anticipation*

    June 5, 2009

  • Uav! Who knew?

    June 5, 2009

  • There's a list I found once which offered to help make up words for concepts that we don't know or have the name of. I can't find it now. Can anyone help? Or I could just describe my problem here, I guess...

    June 11, 2009

  • Gangerh's lost for word.

    June 11, 2009

  • Thanks! Although, now that I've thought about how I wanted to pose the question for a while, I figured out pretty much all I wanted was overstatement. Psh.

    June 11, 2009

  • Invented on the fly here: http://wordie.org/words/nounal. Also see "madeupatory" on Wordie.

    September 10, 2009

  • Here it is on Wordnik. I like that Wordnik's giant computer brain suggests "cromulent" as a related word.

    September 11, 2009

  • John, I added an etymology for madeupical yesterday. Actually, I just directed everyone to Wordie's nounal page where it first occurred, but same difference. ;-)

    September 11, 2009

  • Well hello, old friend. My first comment on nuevo Wordnik.

    October 16, 2009

  • Wait a moment, John... why doesn't this comment appear on Wordie as well? And where are Wordie comments? This could be a mess, if we use both websites for a while and comments are mixed when the merging is complete...

    October 16, 2009

  • Who the hell is the 'johntest' guy? I don't trust him. Might be madeupical.

    October 16, 2009

  • How can one be the johntest guy? Nobody can possibly be johnter than you.

    October 17, 2009

  • That was a very johnty comment, Pro.

    October 18, 2009

  • Um... it's really white in here...

    October 19, 2009

  • *puts shades on*

    October 19, 2009

  • Important question: what constitutes a legitimate word, especially in comparison with a 'madeupical' one?

    November 24, 2009

  • I don't know about Wordnik, but the line was mighty blurry on Wordie. ;-)

    November 25, 2009

  • madeupical words ARE legitimate!

    November 25, 2009

  • That's what I was hoping to hear! ;-)

    Unfortunately, I don't think the rest of the world necessarily agrees.

    November 25, 2009

  • That's good then.

    November 25, 2009

  • Surely every word was once ante-madeupical?

    November 25, 2009

  • Exactly my point. Somewhere along the line, someone has to make up the word.

    (Please don't confuse a word with a random bunch of letters that sound nice together stuck onto a meaning. I can't accept that, and I think I'm justified. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

    November 25, 2009

  • A while ago I saw a video on the internet of Erin McKean talking about lexicography. It pissed me off for some reason I can't remember, and now all I do remember is that she said that loving a word makes it real, which I whole-heartedly agree with, with the caveat that love should not be applied mindlessly, but only to such words as are inherently lovable. (Shoot me, I'm a Platonist in a post-modern world...)

    November 25, 2009

  • I would say a word is a word if it is mutually understood by the communicator and the communicatee.

    November 25, 2009

  • Then books written in a language I don’t understand wouldn’t contain any words when I “read” them. Or would I then just not qualify as communicatee? In that case, if a sentence in such a language were embedded in an English text, for example to show all the pretty characters, I would cease to be communicatee for a second while I read that sentence? That strikes me as rather unintuitive . . .

    I’d rather say that a word becomes a word for someone when (s)he either associates some concept with its form or comes to believe that someone else might do so.

    “Madeupical” then could just mean that someone wants to point out that the originator of the word is a specific person and moreover a person that is felt to be close to some degree, be it temporally, socially or in some other way.

    November 25, 2009

  • OK,then. My mistake.

    I would say a word is a word if it is mutually understood by a communicator and a communicatee.

    November 25, 2009

  • I wonder if that's too narrow still. What about words like runcible that are pure nonsense and can't be strictly understood? I'd say they're still words. And I'd like to think that I am free to make up words, and they are indeed words (in the barest sense), even if the rest of the population never happens to adopt or understand them. They may not be very good words, but what else would they be?(Maybe in that case, the communicator and communicatee are one and the same?)

    November 25, 2009

  • So every combination of letters would constitute a word. I’m wondering if such a definition is not too broad to be useful, but I kind of like it.

    November 26, 2009

  • OK.

    I would say a word is a word if the sense or nonsense of it is understood by a communicator and/or a communicatee and/or a sentient being that is incommunicado.

    November 26, 2009

  • I'd just like to thank PossibleUnderscore for posting this discussion on the madeupical page. :-)

    November 26, 2009

  • But 'runcible' is not sheer nonsense. Witness:

    runcible fork

    runcible spoon

    You say spork, I say runcible spoon.

    November 26, 2009

  • I can accept gangerh's last comment. That's reasonable, but for words that are used more widely, I think, should have some sort of etymology or root.

    November 26, 2009

  • But any such etymological regression must eventually lead to the rootless root and the unrooted rooter. The fabulous first fount of phrases. The majestic magician of madeupicals.

    November 26, 2009

  • I would note that gangerh's definition does not make something a good word. Words can be made up and mutually understood, but linguistically some neologisms are just yucky.

    November 26, 2009

  • "a sentient being that is incommunicado"

    Would an example of this be a "dog lying doggo"?

    November 26, 2009

  • But yuckty is in the ear of the beyucker and/or beyuckee.

    November 26, 2009

  • This reminds me of arguments about what is a species. No definition of "species" works in all situations, and the same is true of "word". OED2 says about species, "The exact definition of a species, and the criteria by which species are to be distinguished (esp. in relation to genera or varieties), have been the subject of much discussion."

    Some of the hallmarks of words are that they are pronounceable, used for open communication, have inferable meanings, and are related to other words (have derivations).

    I don't think every combination of letters can be considered a word. "Madeupical" meets all four of the criteria above; "dhn" mets none of them. The meaning of madeupical, might be inferred by a native speaker of English even without a context, even though it is not a standard formation. The meaning of dhn cannot be determined without a context. It might be an acronym, or it might be an arbitrary string of characters that conveys meaning only as a code.

    November 26, 2009

  • Acai Cleanse

    The acai berry products are plenty in the market and there are many who think that acai berry products are merely colon cleansers, but they are much more than that.

    These kinds of Acai cleanse products will make the method simpler.

    www.goarticles.com

    November 28, 2009

  • Spam Cleanse

    The achy spammy products are plenty on Wordnik and there are many who think achy spammers resemble colon cleansers, but they deserve much worse than that. These kinds of achy spam products will make the site's members irritated.

    November 28, 2009

  • Damn right vo!

    And I'm sorry but colon cleanser doesn't sound overly appealing either.

    November 29, 2009

  • *freep*

    November 29, 2009

  • Gego needs to gego away.

    December 1, 2009

  • Here's a slightly creepy article about a collection of unintentional Freudian slips madeupicalled by therapy clients.

    January 15, 2010

  • Madeupicals are an inventure of frolicking brainscapes. *3*

    February 27, 2010

  • In a rare misstep by the delightful Stephen Fry, he fails to use this word when he most needed it, at the 9:43 mark in this video

    October 19, 2011

  • ruzuzu! You adopted madeupical! Bless you!

    *returns to the great beyond*

    January 21, 2016