Simpsons, Meet the Simpsons

I grew up watching The Flintstones; however, as I do not watch much TV these days I was surprised to find out that the expression "meh" came from The Simpsons. This discovery was made when I commented about my sons' frequent use of the word "meh" on an Engine Room post about neologisms. When I made the comment I had no idea where the word came from; I was simply stating my dislike for the expression. Thank you for filling me in J.D.

By the way, my teenage sons also tell me they are "hungy" all the time and it drives me crazy because I think they are speaking in baby talk. Little did I know, the word "hungy" is also a Simpson's coinage.

I now know that there are numerous Simpson's Dictionaries and word lists all over the Internet (too many to give credit to) and I certainly don't want to take away from any of them, but in honor of my sons' summer vacation I thought I would share some of my favorites.

Adultivity: The state or condition of being an adult.

Banjologist: An expert in banjo based musical styles.

Beginualize: A portmanteau of "actualize" and "begin."

Car Hole: A garage.

Craptacular: A portmanteau of "crappy" and "spectacular."

Deceleratrix: The service brakes on a car.

Embiggen: To make something better. The opposite of belittle.
Introubulate: The act of getting someone into trouble.

Jerkass: A portmanteau of "jerk" and "jackass."

Knowitallism: A word that describes Lisa Simpson’s personality.

Learning juice: Beer.

Malparkage: The state or condition of being illegally parked.

Poindextrose: The chemical which is emitted by geeks, dorks, and four-eyes.

Pointy kitty: A rat.
Telepanhandling: A portmanteau of "telemarketing" and "panhandling."

and last but not least, my personal favorite

Word hole: A mouth.

For the boys:
Meh: An expression of adolescent indifference.
Hungy: Homer’s pronunciation of the word “hungry,” shortened because of hunger strike fatigue (not baby talk, to my surprise).

Here is a link to one of the more thorough Simpson's word lists I came across at wikiSimpsons.

Morphemes Make Creative Words

A favorite blog of mine documents unusual and creative words that are found across the web. Even the name of the blog (Wordlustitude) exemplifies creativity with a word. One of the ways new words are created is by combining morphemes in different ways and by adding morphemes to existing words. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language.

Following is a diagram of the different types of morphemes.

A free morpheme is what its name implies - a morpheme that can stand on its own as a word.

A bound morpheme must be attached to another morpheme.

A lexical morpheme is also called a content morpheme and can usually be defined with a synonym.

A grammatical morpheme is defined by its grammatical function and usually does not have a synonym.

A derivational morpheme creates (derives) a new word.

An inflectional morpheme changes the form of a word.

Here are some of my favorite words from Wordlustitude that come from the creative combination and/or addition of morphemes:

buttlickee
dowhateverer
co-doofus
hoo-hoo-ectomy
diaper-tastrophe
buttmunchosaur
sasquatchtastic
slimeballitude

If you can't think of a word for something - create one.