• Question: If you could come up with a word, what would it be and what would it mean?

    Asked by anon-193419 to Morwenna, Jamal, iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 13 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      To be honest I am really rubbish at English so I wouldn’t even know where to start with making up a word! I struggle to spell and use ones we already have!

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      Oo this is such a cool question! There are quite a few words in other languages that don’t have direct English translations. I’m learning Chinese at the moment and today we learned the phrase ‘sā jiāo’ which means something like to throw a tantrum or to be in a mood, but it’s the grown up equivalent so not used for children. We don’t have a word like that in English but I think it might be useful!

    • Photo: Iain Staniland

      Iain Staniland answered on 13 Nov 2018: last edited 13 Nov 2018 3:23 pm

      There is a brilliant book on this called the “Meaning of Liff”
      it is a game you can play where you use place names to describe something that does not have a word for it but needs one. such as:
      THURNBY (n.)
      To hold a ruler on one end on a desk and make the other end go bbddbbddbbrrbrrrrddrr.

      (I used to live near the village of Thurnby)

      so let me try one:
      Histon (n.)
      The collective term for the bits you have left over when you try to put flat pack furniture together. e.g. I bought this wardrobe from IKEA and had so much histon when I finished I could almost build another!

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