#250 Inventing new words and phrases with your friends that only make sense to you

Neil Pasricha

Ten goods.

That’s a phrase my friends used in high school to express our casual annoyance with minor problems. Extra homework for the weekend? Ten goods. Cafeteria sold out of panzerottis? Ten goods. Tennis ball stuck in the gutter during road hockey? Ten goods.

Now you got it.

Ryan started saying it first and Chad caught on and soon it became one of those made-up phrases we used all the time. It was a secret code, scrambled joke, and private head-nod with its own set of rules on how it was used.

For example! Minor things such as falling off Rainbow Road were shortened to the simple ‘Ten’ with sarcastic eyebrow raise and one-second lip curl. Major things like getting assigned an essay just before the long weekend was met with the long drawl version of ‘Tehhhhhhhhhhhn.’

I’m not saying it made sense but it made sense to us.

Yes, when you hang with a tight pack of peeps long enough it’s amazing how new words start filling the tiny cracks between sounds and sentences. It’s strangely beautiful to see language evolving before your eyes and be part of its creation. Brains suddenly push past booky norms to create clarity in dark vacuums of vagueness.

Just remember — every word we use today came from a group of friends who started using it long ago. So to those long gone packs of chatty teens and wordy queens we say thanks for helping us understand…. everything we’re talking about. And when your group of friends comes up some good ones… make sure you keeping using them and shout ’em out.

AWESOME!

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— Email message —

“Over Easter weekend my friend and I were hiking along a gorgeous trail in the Slocan Valley, British Columbia. We were almost back at the car when and I needed to use the facilities…well, the wonderful folks who maintain the trail also have out-houses just for people like me! I opened the door and SQUEALED with delight because there, resting above the fully stocked toilet-paper dispenser, was The Book of Awesome!” – Jackie L.


Photos from: here, here, and here

95 thoughts to “#250 Inventing new words and phrases with your friends that only make sense to you”

  2. and people who let you in, so it all makes a little more sense to you; so you can feel it in your belly laugh and your bones some too, are also awesome~ true~
    “Quack-Quack”

    Hail Slocan Valley people and happy trails to you, Jackie for sharing.

      1. PEASE Magda, Bee my guest~ I’m a B-liever and I’m getting totally confused…”BE-ZINGA!”

        1. Sorry Wendy, it’s an inside joke. You could try asking Freddo. He may just have gotten it.

          1. Although overcast at times with Motley, I get the whole love and boundaries thing for the most part, now.
            Communication is 95% unspoken; electronics completely violate the theory by about 99%.
            “Bazinga” too belongs to the Big Bang Theory gang…
            borrowed cuz a girl just wants to have a little fun:)

            1. all fun and games until somebody trips over the boundary.
              accept and respect…
              really hope you don’t, mind if I do, Neil and friends…borrow
              “Ten goods!”
              “…and to all a good night!”
              borrowed from, “T’was the Night Before Christmas.”

              1. Magda, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer but just to clarify, I was asking for clarity on your May 6th. 10:41 comment to me. Honestly, my intentions would not be to cross a line. Magnolia’s are finally in bloom~must go seize the day. I don’t understand the whole salmon fight either, but caysera-sera. Thanks…have a happy day:)

                  1. The salmon thing “Ondartje started a food fight” is just funny. Sometimes I just laugh when things make me laugh. geez :)
                    Enjoy the day Wendy. It’s a beautiful one here too.

  3. Sort of like when jdurley says: *tick*, and we all know what she’s talking about?

    Btw: as for the Jackie’s photo??

    *tick*

    1. Ohhhhh! You wanted to beat jdurley but you forgot the rule about there being no non-Neil *tick*s !

      1. Lara, please read later last night comment on #251, then take a sentimental journey back to “Ducks” #806, with your “awesome clan.” Would love to see what you all collaberate from: playmesa comment from back in 1971-72, I totally remember too.
        Just joining in late in the game, however; see an opportunity to “pull a needle full of thread” down the yellow brick road, this wizard, Neil and all of you have created…Have courage, this one could enter some really fun-filled muddy waters for you all to play, with your big hearts and brains!

        1. Oh, and my sincere apologies for the way I mispelled jdurley!!!

        1. Man – we were epic in that comment thread (glue movies).. hard to believe that was over 250 posts ago, but that was a strong effort by all of us..

          Neil – do another post about movies so we can have an excuse to post more of our favorite Zoolander quotes!

            1. Orange Mocha Frappuccino!

              “Jitterbug … jitterbug … you put the boom-boom into my heart … “

              1. How bout I answer your question with another question; how many abo-digitals do you see modelling?

    1. LOL, “scale of stupid to bear”. I’d love to know what other points are on that scale. For example, where would “Duck” fall on that scale?

          1. Ack!! That link is terrible.. it takes something super awesome (RickRoll’ing), and ruins it with something awful (Ducks!)…

            But thanks for sharing anyways, Lara..

            Btw: T-minus 4 days until my camping trip to try my Nutella-mallow for the first time!

            1. But what a sound-track! I, for one, enjoyed it very much, and immediately e-mailed the link to geekteen.

              Well played, Lara!

              1. :DDDDD
                Yes, that is definitely not the sound track I expected to accompany it. Awesome on many levels.
                I’m jealous of your camping trip and Nutella-mallowing, Freddo! (nutellowing? there’s gotta be a way to shorten this, while we’re on the topic of inventing words)

  6. My friends and I have so many of these!!

    Made up words with friends is so fetch. ;)

    1. Gretchen, stop trying to make “fetch” happen; it’s not going to happen! :)

      1. “Fetch” ? Now that opens the door who a whole string of puppy comments :)

      2. Confession time.. I’ve never seen Mean Girls.. is it worth checking out? I mean, it’s written by the amazing Tina Fey, so I imagine it’s great, but would like some additional confirmation..

        btw: That one girl (Gretchen??) did a great job of absolutely withering at that blonde girls put-down.. Those two seconds of her transforming from excited about saying “fetch” and wearing a rather fetch santa hat to being absolutely wanting to crawl into a hole and die was pretty well done.

        1. If you can appreciate that scene, you should definitely see the whole movie. It is high on the list of my “catch it on TV and always watch it, but never see the beginning” guilty pleasure movies.

        2. Oh my god, Freddo.

          I mean, this is worse/more surprising than me never having seen WHMS (also refreshed upon careful review of the Glue Movies comment thread … therefore, I feel the need to call to your attention that I am NOT, as stated yesterday, a WHMS-hater … note that I said I WANT to watch it!)!!

          Anyhoo, I LOVE this movie. I laugh so hard at so many parts. It’s also extremely quotable … I dare you not to bust out a “Boo, you whore!” after watching. I bet you’ve heard things from Mean Girls for the past six-ish years and never even knew it. Anyway, I think it’s great and it’s one of the VERY few “girl” movies that most (if not all) my guy friends own up to loving.

          I’m sure you’re thinking right now, “How can I trust the judgement of someone who, at one time, set a VCR to record NCIS?” I just need to clarify, in my defense, that it is my guilty pleasure show AND that it’s full of cute guys. While I understand that probably doesn’t appeal to you personally, I ask that you not judge too harshly … for it is an outlier.

        3. (Shakes finger at Freddo) How have you NOT seen this yet?

          I have this theory, that if you cut off all her hair she’d look like a British man

          1. “Hey! You’re not supposed to be in here!”
            “Oooh, Danny DeVito! I love your work!”

            “She doesn’t even go here!”
            “Do you even go to this school?”
            “No … I just have a lot of feelings.”

            “I don’t think my father, the inventor of Toaster Strudel, would be too pleased to hear about this.”

            “Do you want to go to Taco Bell?
            “I can’t go to Taco Bell! I’m on an all-carb diet! GAWD, Karen, you are so STUPID!”

            1. Gretchen, I’m sorry I laughed at you that time you got diarrhea at Barnes & Nobles.

              And I’m sorry for telling everyone about it.

              And I’m sorry for repeating it now.

            3. Mean Girls, along with Anchorman, is one of the most quotable movies ever. My friends and I like to insert the line, “she doesn’t even go here!” into as many situations as possible.

  7. I love secret codes phrases. They make me feel like a ninja!

    My friend and I even had a secret hand-shake. Except it wasn’t particularly secretive. It involved shaking hands like an ordinary person… Then bumping heads in a rather painful fashion.

    Hi! How’s it going?
    *shake*
    *skull-fracture*

  9. You just brought back some great funny memories!! Now, I’m not going to reveal any of our secret codes on here, but yes, they were awesome!!!!

    1. Just got off the phone with my bff and I told her about this post. We went over all the ones we could remember and wow, there’s a lot of codes we used all through high school, mostly for people’s names so we could talk about them and no one would know.

  10. Neil you are one of the most honest, sincere and AWESOME presenters I’ve witnessed! Thanks for making a difference & leaving Regina :) an ‘awesomer’ place! (p.s. @ our work function last night AWESOMER really WAS a word!!)

  12. Our made up words are “weegag” and “GUTCH.”
    and yes, GUTCH should always be completely capitalized.

  14. This reminds me of when my best friend and I were younger. We were too old to admit that we still enjoyed playing with Beanie Babies. So when we wanted to play we would casually ask each other if we wanted to play Code One later. :)

  17. This brought back great memories of my dad who had all sorts of phrases that meant something other than how they sounded. My favorite is “fire up the back yard” which meant he was going to turn on the sprinklers in the back yard to water the lawn. We knew that if we timed it right, we could run to the back of the yard and back to the house without getting wet by the sprinklers that rotated thru a 90 degree angle. This was always a competition.

  18. Nightmorning- The time between 12am and sunrise, where it’s dark enough to be considered night, but is techinically morning. Often used as a farewell “Good nightmorning!”

  19. My buds and I would start with a saying like “thats getting really old” and over time shorten it to “dude, thats getting real.” No one knew what we were talking about obviously, because “real” doesnt mean “old.” Awesome times.

  20. My personal favorite: Neveryday. As in, “Going to my Physics class? Ha! That’s a neveryday occurrence.”

  22. I just found your blog via Yahoo Shine. OMG…how have I not found this blog before. I LOVE it!!!! I’ll be back for more awesome things, thank you soooo much!!!!

  23. Nowadays, “FoxtrotBravo” might refer to facebook, football, or maybe flashback, if you’re swedish, but since around 1998, in our family it definitely eluded to the infamous Fartbat. That pesky rodent flew by whenever we were getting settled into our tent on a dark, starry night, or whenever we were relaxing with a warm blanket and a dvd. As the years went by, it became quite the regular visitor, though, strangely, even? in the daytime, at weddings, family gatherings, or at the beach. But with every “sighting” came smiles and giggles and a lot of AWESOME!

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  25. Just bought my mother’s day present, a nice soft cover (yellow!) copy of The Book of (even more) Awesome!

    Quick word to all the mums out there: Without you, we could not experience the rest of the world. That makes you the most AWESOME possible!

  27. When one of your favorite bloggers is doing very, very well, BUT hasn’t gone *boringly mainstream* yet (much less in your own part of the world): awesome!

  28. With my friends and family, we make up new names for things – our favorite rum is Maliboooooze! And there’s a store in West Ed Mall that sells extremely skimpy outfits; that one’s called ‘Ho’s on the Go’

  29. This might be my favorite one yet. With my friends it’s usually a quote from some movie we all love instead of a word, but the feeling is the same. It’s great to just be able to say something off the wall and laugh with your friends instead of getting the puzzled/you’re crazy look you’d get from anyone else.

  30. Brains suddenly push past booky norms to create clarity in dark vacuums of vagueness.

    totes

  31. My friend once made up a word in a Chemistry test – she was asked what kind of bonding a diagram showed and answered ‘bondalisation’ as her best guess. We try and get it in everywhere we can, just cause it’s such an awesome word. Another one of her’s is ‘tomight’ – tomorrow night, so conveniently awesome.

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  39. For my friends and I, it’s a seal noise whenever there’s an awkward silence.

    We’ll be talking, then stop, and someone, usually me, will start going ‘Orp! Orp! Orp!” and clap like a seal.

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  43. My personal faves are “the Penguin technique” “stop killing the vegetation” and “they are broken crayons”. Such… uhh… interesting memories ;) gotta luv my crazy friends :D

    1. How could I possibly have forgotten “dumb phone” “drug rug” and “wall-writing-advice” ??? epic stories :)

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