Friday, June 1, 2007

Made-Up Word of the Day: Elegonated

Today's word is one which I unintentionally invented. For those of you whose vocabulary is largely built through reading (as mine is), you might be familiar with the problem of mis-pronouncing a word that you've read for years, but never actually heard aloud. This doesn't happen often for me, but it can have some interesting results when it does occur. In the case of elongated, I actually mis-read the word when I first read it, and so always pronounced it "elegonated" instead.

I actually think that my mis-pronounced/spelled version is better and should be a new word. Whereas elongated refers to something which is simply lengthened, elegonated refers to something which is lengthened in a graceful or elegant style.

What made-up words have you accidentally coined?

2 comments:

Rachel V. Olivier said...

LOL! That's cute! When I was younger I used to mispronounce vague. I gave it the (short or long? I've forgotten) vowel sound in ant. So it was Vag. Same with plague. I pronounced it plag. I figured if something really were vague it wouldn't have a sharp sound like the a in brave. Go figure.

Christopher M. Park said...

That's another good one! Growing up I had an Indian friend who always pronounced "war" as "waar." He knew it wasn't right, but didn't care. My wife always pronounced "wolf" as "woof," as well. I think we all have some sort of little verbal tics like this.