Sniglet

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A sniglet (/ˈsnɪɡlɪt/) is an often humorous word made up to describe something for which no dictionary word exists. Introduced in the 1980s TV comedy series Not Necessarily the News, sniglets were generated and published in significant numbers, along with submissions by fans, in several books by Rich Hall, beginning with his Sniglets, Sniglets for Kids, and More Sniglets in the mid-1980s.[1]

Origin

Development by Rich Hall

The term sniglet was conceived by comedian

portmanteau words, a comedic style often traced to Lewis Carroll.[citation needed
]

The Hall books have their entries arranged in alphabetical order like a dictionary, with information on how to pronounce the word, followed by a definition and sometimes accompanied by an illustration. The original book has two appendices, "Anatomical Sniglets" and "Extra Added Bonus Section for Poets", and More Sniglets includes an "Audio-Visual Sniglets" section. All five books included an "Official Sniglets Entry Blank", beginning, "Dear Rich: Here's my sniglet, which is every bit as clever as any in this dictionary."

The Game of Sniglets is a board game in which players tried to identify the "official" sniglet from among a list that also included sniglets that fellow participants had created to go along with a provided definition.

nonsensical words.[5]

Precursors

In 1914, humorist

Paul Jennings had published made-up meanings of real place-names in a 1963 essay appearing in The Jenguin Pennings.[6] Author Douglas Adams, while travelling with British comedy producer John Lloyd, suggested they play a game he had learned at school in which players were challenged to make up plausible word definitions for place names taken from road maps; the definitions they came up with were later incorporated into a 1983 book, The Meaning of Liff.[7][8][9] The similarities and relationship between the content of this book and the Hall concept of sniglets is noted, by Barbara Wallraff, in Word Court (2001).[10] Douglas Adams believed that when the format of Lloyd's satirical TV show Not the Nine O'Clock News was sold to America—where it became Not Necessarily the News—the producers also took the made-up word definition concept, which became the sniglets popularized by Hall.[11]

Beyond comedy

In a 1990 interview, Hall was asked if the "Sniglets books [were] completely for comic value?" He answered,

Yeah. Well, no. I wouldn't say they're completely for comic value. I mean, I get letters from schools all the time saying how they've incorporated a sniglet book into their reading program. You can look at a lot of the words and sort of break them down into their

etymological origins. And you can learn a lot about how and where words derive from. When you assign this frailty of human nature a word, then the word has to work. It has to either be a hybrid of several other words, or have a Latin origin, or something.[12]

Anne Wescott Dodd's A Handbook for Substitute Teachers (1989)[13] and Marcia L. Tate's Reading and Language Arts Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites: 20 Literacy Strategies That Engage the Brain (2005)[14]

suggest creating sniglets as a classroom activity, and so bear out his claim.

Popular English language experts such as

Atlantic Monthly column "Word Fugitives"[17] features words invented by readers, although they had to be puns, which many sniglets are not.[citation needed
]

Examples

  • Aquadextrous: possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet with the toes.[18]
  • Castcaspers: dead actors who appear on television.[19]
  • Chwads: discarded gum found beneath tables and countertops.[18]
  • Essoasso: One who swerves through a service station to avoid a red light.
  • Glutetic chair: the chair design found in movie theaters.[18]
  • Icelanche: When ice at the bottom of an upturned glass suddenly moves toward the mouth as one attempts to finish drinking the liquid.[19]
  • Jokesult: When someone insults you, you call them on it, and they say, "It was just a joke."
  • Larry: a frayed toothbrush.[19]
  • Premblememblemation: The act of checking that a letter is in a mailbox after it has been dropped.[18]
  • Snackmosphere: the pocket of air found inside snack and/or potato chip bags.[18]
  • Terma helper: The extra verbiage used to stretch a 600-word essay to the required 1000.
  • Toboggan hagen: a large ice cream sundae.[19]
  • Eyes Hockey: The substance found in the corner of your eye in the morning.
  • Pursabyss: where unrecovered belongings reside within a woman's handbag.

In popular culture

Homer Simpson, a fictional character of the animated television series The Simpsons, suggests Son of Sniglet as a good book to name as a favorite and a life influence when he is completing his college application in the episode "Homer Goes to College".[20]

The fictional character Dale Gribble in the animated television series King of the Hill explains his inappropriate laughter upon successfully sabotaging a new relationship of fellow character Bill Dauterive, saying "just remembered a funny sniglet!"[21]

The satirical newspaper The Onion published an article in 2001 mocking sniglets as an obscure fad.[22]

See also

References

  1. ^ Petelin, Roslyn (17 January 2018). "Milkshake duck, sniglets and why there's nothing new about invented words". abc.net.au. Retrieved 16 July 2018..
  2. ^ a b Wallraff, Barbara (1 March 2006). "Shouldn't There Be a Word ... ?". The American Scholar. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  3. ^
    ISBN 0020125402
    .
  4. ISBN 0618130063
    .
  5. ^ a b "The Game of Sniglets Playing Instructions" (PDF). Blippee.com. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
  6. ^ Ware, Wye, Watford, read by the author.
  7. ^ Gartner, Michael (15 March 1987). Words, Newsday
  8. ISBN 082043289X
    .
  9. ISBN 1590281985
    .
  10. ^
    ISBN 0544109937
    . Retrieved 2 April 2016.
  11. ^ Adams, Douglas & Pearlman, Gregg (1987-03-27). "Exclusive Interview With Douglas Adams (Author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)". Archived from the original on 2013-09-23.
  12. MIT
    : 10.
  13. ISBN 0398055394
    .
  14. ISBN 1412915104
    .
  15. ISBN 0671028111
    .
  16. ISBN 0060832738
    .
  17. ^ "Word Fugitives". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
  18. ^
    ISBN 0-02-012530-5
    .
  19. ^ a b c d "Sniglets". www.astro.umd.edu. Archived from the original on 20 September 2016. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
  20. ISBN 978-1435245471
    .
  21. ^ "King of the Hill : Episode "Untitled Blake McCormack Project" (2008)". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
  22. ^ "Man Won't Stop Coming Up With New Sniglets". The Onion. 37 (11). 2001-03-28. Retrieved 2018-09-09.

Further reading

Primary sources

Rich Hall released several volumes of collected sniglets, illustrated by Arnie Ten:

External links

Look up sniglet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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