# Great "wrong" words



## Sporky McGuffin (18 Dec 2015)

A recent post reminded me of the one thing we have to thank GWB Jnr for - the invention of the word "misunderestimate".

I also like "automagically", to describe any particularly useful and unexpected automatic behaviour.


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## Nelsun (18 Dec 2015)

Our youngest coined "accididn't".

Me: Did you enjoy your peanut butter on toast? And why is peanut butter smeared across the TV screen? Was that you?

Boy Wonder: No, it was an accididn't.

God love him!


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## Sporky McGuffin (18 Dec 2015)

That would find considerable application in my household.


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## bugbear (18 Dec 2015)

Sporky McGuffin":2wl2rwy7 said:


> I also like "automagically", to describe any particularly useful and unexpected automatic behaviour.



It's a lovely word, but it's neither wrong, nor indeed new; it's in the OED, and appeared (it says) in the 1940's.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... omagically

BugBear


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## Sporky McGuffin (18 Dec 2015)

That knowledge fills me with a sense of the world being a good place.


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## Sporky McGuffin (18 Dec 2015)

Which reminds me of "unvented" - when you come up with something on your own, but it turns out that it already exists.

For example "I unvented 'automagically'".


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## Phil Pascoe (18 Dec 2015)

bugbear":fog0kbv6 said:


> Sporky McGuffin":fog0kbv6 said:
> 
> 
> > I also like "automagically", to describe any particularly useful and unexpected automatic behaviour.
> ...


It could still be wrong. Dictionaries record common usage, not correct usage.


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## John Brown (18 Dec 2015)

I been unventing things for years, I'm glad to find out there's a term for it...

I unvented "condescending boiler" and "vindictive text", to name but two.


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## bugbear (18 Dec 2015)

phil.p":9taifywd said:


> bugbear":9taifywd said:
> 
> 
> > Sporky McGuffin":9taifywd said:
> ...



Lacking ($DEITY forbid!) an English equivalent of the Académie française, there is no definition
of correct English. Common usage is all there is, innit.  

Googling found this interesting article on the topic.

BugBear


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## RogerS (18 Dec 2015)

When our overhead cables were buried, apparently it was 'undergrounding'.


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## Phil Pascoe (18 Dec 2015)

Good one, BB. I always remember reading that an American dictionary (an old Webster's iirc) gave a Dord as a unit of density. It had copied another dictionary wrongly - they had put D or d - a unit of density.


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## Phil Pascoe (18 Dec 2015)

I remember my daughter aged about three telling swmbo that she was feeling very astutey.


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## brianhabby (18 Dec 2015)

My five year old granddaughter has her own word for the wind turbines off the coast - 'windowmills' 

regards

Brian


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## Sporky McGuffin (18 Dec 2015)

"Beautilitarian". Both attractive and practical.


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## Phil Pascoe (18 Dec 2015)

Not a wrong word, but a great word - schlimmbesserung.


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## Student (18 Dec 2015)

Two other additions to the English language that I have heard

On a delayed train "we apologise for the delay in platforming this train". I never tealsied that there was a verb "to platform".

An American talking about problems of air traffic control "The skies over Los Angeles are overhelicopterised"


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## artie (19 Dec 2015)

Student":3ihlbvo5 said:


> I never tealsied that




"Tealise"

Is that when you have an idea while having a cuppa.?


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## bugbear (19 Dec 2015)

Sporky McGuffin":2zn4vaxr said:


> "Beautilitarian". Both attractive and practical.


Reminiscent of this quote from William Morris (great designer, lousy socialist):

_*If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.*_

BugBear


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## Steve Maskery (19 Dec 2015)

A few weeks ago there was an interview on PM on R4 when the interviewee used the word "intertwangled". Subsequently there was a discussion about what it meant and how new words come about. So Eddie Mair, bless him, decided it would be a good idea to get the word into common usage so that it would be added to the OED.

So every night for the following week or so he slipped the word "intertwangled" into his pieces, which of course, generated correspondence...


_Dear Eddolyn
I would like to complain in the strongest possible terms about the increaferation in this ridicupid practice of jumblixing up two perfectly satisfadequate words to manubricate some totally unnecerfluous cross-Franken-brid word, just to get it into the OED.

It must terminop now, as this intertwanglificationising just encourages every Tom, Dick and Steve Maskery to jump on the bandwaggon and waste a good half-hour emulaping this idiazy behaviour on national wireless, by composocting a page of complotal nonsbish, in what is obviously just a bare-flatant attempt to get read out on the PM letters slot.

That two grown men should indulge in this childerile behaviour is, quite fronestly, pitithetic._

It worked.


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## Phil Pascoe (19 Dec 2015)

Stanley Unwin, eat your heart out.


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## Wildman (19 Dec 2015)

my favourite is Campering, after all you go motorhoming or caravanning so why not campering, as suggested by a Dutch friend.


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## artie (19 Dec 2015)

phil.p":bhesi1ey said:


> Stanley Unwin, eat your heart out.



Beat me to it.


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## Steve Maskery (19 Dec 2015)

Eddie did say afterwards, "Didn't that used to be somebody's act?".


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## monkeybiter (19 Dec 2015)

Hmmm 'satisfadequate', I like that, nice ring to it. Might start using it.


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## graduate_owner (19 Dec 2015)

I had cut up some timber, assisted by my teenage daughter, and was ready to assemble the parts. My daughter came up with - shall we mantle it now? I suppose as the opposite of dismantle it made sense to her.

K


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## Phil Pascoe (19 Dec 2015)

Dismantle is a better word than the now common disassemble.


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## Phil Pascoe (19 Dec 2015)

That just made me think. In Cornish vernacular you neither dismantle something nor disassemble it - you take it abroad. A good friend many years ago told me how he'd explained to a rep from a company that they dealt with that they couldn't find a fault with a machine even after taking it abroad. The reply from the rep was "good lord, man - why on earth did you take it out of the country?"


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## artie (20 Dec 2015)

One of my sons first jobs was stacking shelves in Sainsburys. He remarked how funny it was that the "gruntled " customers never get a mention.


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## whiskywill (6 Jan 2016)

Not a wrong word as such, but the incorrect use of a word. 
A local radio sports commentator is fond of saying a footballer has been "dispossessed" when he loses the ball. How does he become homeless just by playing football?


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## gregmcateer (6 Jan 2016)

When my Dad received a complaint from a customer, declaring himself to be 'disgruntled', he replied with a nice long letter, assuring said customer he would 'make every effort to regruntle him'.

Worked, too - became his best reference site.


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## Phil Pascoe (6 Jan 2016)

I try not to regruntle people, I try to upgruntle them. ... no that's billhooks, but it's a nice word.


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## SVB (6 Jan 2016)

From the mouths of children:

Unpuff - deflate (air mattress in this case)
Span (vb) - something one does with a spanner

S


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## Nelsun (14 Jul 2016)

Rollitate - to rotate something by rolling it (primarily during Lego construction)


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## Bm101 (14 Jul 2016)

That's odd. I was just thinking about this thread today at work weirdly... Nice timing Nelsun! 
Brassiliate. 
Meaning: To pick up bits of random brass fittings (generally but by no means always while on a builders clean and there's loads of stuff just lying around before they bin about 3 grands worth of fittings, screws and so on), hold it in the air and wonder if you can cut a bit off and make it into a cap lever screw for the latest project somehow because it's got a nice bit of knurling on it and is anybody watching, no, oops I'll just pop this in my pocket then.


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## mailee (14 Jul 2016)

The American phrase that is often used amuses me, Compartmentalise. :lol: using compartments.


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## Eric The Viking (14 Jul 2016)

artie":22e8oik8 said:


> phil.p":22e8oik8 said:
> 
> 
> > Stanley Unwin, eat your heart out.
> ...



Wish I'd met him! 

The late great Professor was a BBC transmitter engineer during the war, and stayed in BBC Engineering for much of his career. 

Here's an interview he gave (for internal use only!) on the new "Type B" sound desks then coming (belatedly) into use in Bush House around 1959: http://www.suppertime.co.uk/blogmywiki/2012/08/prof-unwin/. 

Post-war the BBC used three sorts of sound desk: Marconi and "Type A" both of which were in wartime use (IIRC), and later "Type B" which was ubiquitous in radio and TV studios until the mid 1960s (types A and B were BBC design/build). 

I started in 1978: Marconi and Type B were still in use - being up-to-date wasn't a BBC priority! The sub-text is that many people, Unwin included, I think, felt the "new" Type B kit was built down to a price.

But if you're a hifi buff... this will make stereo very clear. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ol6iCCgEPQA


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## Stanleymonkey (14 Jul 2016)

Would shi£tums and Fu££ity lower the tone of this thread?


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## DrPhill (14 Jul 2016)

I like 'mandraulically'. Doing it by hand.


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## NazNomad (15 Jul 2016)

I was recently chatting to the OH about cordless raisins. Yes, I know I meant 'seedless', but I was technically still right.


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## AES (15 Jul 2016)

Nice thread.

Not mine, but I've always liked "testiculate" - someone who's excitedly waving his arms around while talking a load of balls.

Also not mine but I also like "immediately if not sooner", and "just in time to miss ....." (e.g. "How come you always arrive in the kitchen just in time to miss the washing up?"

AES


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## Aggrajag (15 Jul 2016)

Teaching my son the joys of an Indian curry when he was about 5 he said he didn't want to eat it because it was too spiky. So-close, yet so-far, yet still so right!


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## Eric The Viking (15 Jul 2016)

In response to AES...

... There's a children's book by Jill Murphy, "Five Minutes Peace", that we read to ours when they were little*. It is quite wonderful.

She explains the process of getting ready for school in one sentence: "The children hurry slowly."

It's in common use in our family. 

E.

*I think one reason they loved it in was because it made mummy and daddy crease up.


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## gregmcateer (15 Jul 2016)

Just remembered; A Dad at the judo club said his son was; "biting at the chomp" to get back on the mat after injury.

Also, my bro mentioned his Sales Manager would close a meeting with;

"so, without further adieu..."

and his M-i-L likes a drop of "Tina Marie" after dinner. (The left overs of which would have been covered with "cling-foil"


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## Random Orbital Bob (15 Jul 2016)

Nelsun":trjw932z said:


> Our youngest coined "accididn't".
> 
> Me: Did you enjoy your peanut butter on toast? And why is peanut butter smeared across the TV screen? Was that you?
> 
> ...



That's lovely, bless the little tyke


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## NazNomad (15 Jul 2016)

Living in Wales, the phrase ''whose boots are these shoes?'' is a good one.


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## AES (15 Jul 2016)

Many will I'm sure know the Rad 4 programme "I'm sorry I haven't a clue" ("Come back Humph, all is forgiven"). Among the regular slots in each show was "The Uxbridge English Dictionary" in which the likes of Frank Muir and Dennis Norden changed 1 letter to make a silly (and often very funny) new word.

Can't think of any examples off hand, sorry, but great stuff and well worth a bit of a search through the BBC Radio web site archives.

AES


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## sunnybob (15 Jul 2016)

We had a large 30 ft high artisian well with a 12 ft fan right next to our house. My 3 year old grandson, every time it started turning in the wind, would run around to watch shouting "Mickey! Mickey!"
we never found out why. He's 6 now and the windmill is gone, so thats a forever mystery.


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## Aggrajag (15 Jul 2016)

sunnybob":3rvk9e7x said:


> We had a large 30 ft high artisian well with a 12 ft fan right next to our house. My 3 year old grandson, every time it started turning in the wind, would run around to watch shouting "Mickey! Mickey!"
> we never found out why. He's 6 now and the windmill is gone, so thats a forever mystery.


Find out or I may never sleep again! My brain can't handle unresolved issues!!


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## Andrewf (15 Jul 2016)

In my family we use desecrated coconut for cooking. Think it start with my daughter.


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## sunnybob (15 Jul 2016)

keep calm, dont panic.
But sorry, its now history, and he cant remember anything about it.

he did it on 3 seperate visits in the one year, and even his mum couldnt find out why it was a mickey.


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## sunnybob (15 Jul 2016)

the milkman used to deliver paralysed milk in our street.


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## Aggrajag (15 Jul 2016)

sunnybob":2n32ag9l said:


> keep calm, dont panic.
> But sorry, its now history, and he cant remember anything about it.
> 
> he did it on 3 seperate visits in the one year, and even his mum couldnt find out why it was a mickey.


 #-o


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## Cinimod (15 Jul 2016)

Apparently I used to call cash registers " cabbages wisters" and a good friend of mine at agricultural college wrote about " nitrogen fixing rissoles" in an exam, which still makes me smile...........dom


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## NazNomad (15 Jul 2016)

Minnie Mouse built a windmill in 'Clogged', if that helps?


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## sunnybob (15 Jul 2016)

nope


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## Phil Pascoe (15 Jul 2016)

There is a hill close to us called Carn Brea (a tautology, actually, as both words mean hill) that my boy always loved, and he would sooner go there to play than the beach. He always asked to go to up Normy - years later no one ever found out why it became known as "Normy" - it is to this day.


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## DrPhill (15 Jul 2016)

You have reminded me of something I said when younger that caused me much ridicule. I still think it is logical: I heard 'RSJ' as 'Irish J' - because it is 'H' shape in cross section (and our builder was Jim Kilpatrick ;-).


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## RossJarvis (15 Jul 2016)

DrPhill":r9z3lhxh said:


> I like 'mandraulically'. Doing it by hand.



I was fairly certain that Mandraulics is a standard power delivery system used by all mechanical branches of the UK military. I hadn't realised it was "man" from "manual" and thought it was man-power from one to lots of men. Soon to become "person-draulics"

When I ran an engineering workshop, the process of incorrectly working on an item was known as "Mullerisation" The action of doing this was "Mullering" and when doing it often it was known as "Mullerfacturing". We had a few "Mullerers" and produced a number of "Mullered" Items. I think this is not uncommon.


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## artie (15 Jul 2016)

sunnybob":1stxuk8g said:


> We had a large 30 ft high artisian well with a 12 ft fan right next to our house. My 3 year old grandson, every time it started turning in the wind, would run around to watch shouting "Mickey! Mickey!"
> we never found out why. He's 6 now and the windmill is gone, so thats a forever mystery.



Nothing to do with words, but just curious as to what the windmill was for on an artesian well.?


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## NazNomad (15 Jul 2016)

Maybe it was just an Artisan well? :-D


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## DrPhill (15 Jul 2016)

RossJarvis":2a7hb5mh said:


> DrPhill":2a7hb5mh said:
> 
> 
> > I like 'mandraulically'. Doing it by hand.
> ...



I could be wrong.


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## sunnybob (16 Jul 2016)

I've always thought of these as Artisian wells, I would accept being corrected.
This is a pic of the day it was taken down. Theres a man up the top. he climbed the side pylon and is unbolting the head with no support or straps of any kind.

maybe thats whats known as an Artisan on an Artisian?


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## sawdust1 (16 Jul 2016)

Back when i was an apprentice draftsman in an electronics factory i was doing some text to an assembly drawing
when i used the word LOWERMOST as opposite to uppermost.
I was called up in front of my superior when i refused to change it.

My daughter would call a robin a robin rest breast.


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## Benchwayze (16 Jul 2016)

Someone once told me there was no such word as drippled. The spell check thinks not too; but I used it once in a short-story, because I thought it described rain drippling down a window pane to a 'T'! :lol: 

So the word's in my dictionary. Over to you BB! 

John


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## NazNomad (16 Jul 2016)

sunnybob":3a29qmay said:


> I've always thought of these as Artisian wells, I would accept being corrected.



From Geography lessons {cough} decades ago, I thought artesian wells flowed freely from the ground without the need for a pump?


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Jul 2016)

A friend many years ago sunk wells for a living, and he was asked to sink one somewhere he was quite sure there was no water. He called out the diviner he usually used and he had a twitch and said yes, go ahead there's plenty there. He was very unsure but had never found the guy to be wrong. He found water, finished the job and headed off for the weekend. He got a phone call on the Monday morning asking him to come back - what's the problem, he asked, expecting to be told it had run dry. No, the opposite, the property owner said, we're flooding the road. They'd hit an Artesian.


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## Harbo (16 Jul 2016)

For years my wife used to believe the words I sang were correct - " Eleanor Rigby picking her nose in the church when there's nobody there" 

Rod


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## sunnybob (16 Jul 2016)

well. (well, get it?), I have learnt something today. that "artisian well" is actually a multi bladed wind pump.
Who'd a thunk it?


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## artie (16 Jul 2016)

I can't find any reference to artisian well, only artesian, in which the water rises to or above ground level of it's own volition.


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## Bm101 (16 Jul 2016)

I'm always surprised how many out of work legal professionals you see working at Starbucks or Costa and the like. They must really like their coffee. All that education and training must cost a fair bit I'm guessing. And you'd need to be fairly bright to do all those exams and pysically fit! No idea what it entails but 'sitting the bar' sounds both exhausting and painful. Rather than defend the innocent in court, or be moved to smite wickedness though, there they all are with 'Barrista' embroidered on their shirts. Some of them are 'Trainee Barristas'. Haven't 
finished legal college probably. 
Strange though.


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## NazNomad (16 Jul 2016)

Undeniably lower-class people that pronounce 'chorizo' properly, in some vain attempt to falsify their level of sophistication.


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Jul 2016)

There was an ad in our local weekly for a city coffee bar that needed a barrister, which I sent to Private Eye and had published.


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## Benchwayze (16 Jul 2016)

NazNomad":1bcsocjq said:


> Undeniably lower-class people that pronounce 'chorizo' properly, in some vain attempt to falsify their level of sophistication.



What's a Chorizo? Is it a Portuguese Choir? Or a funny way to spell sausage?


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## NazNomad (16 Jul 2016)

It's a choir of heavenly sausages, I think.

Now, it's very rural where I live and I was just saying that I hadn't been anywhere today.
OH said, ''you went up the road''

Me: Oh yeah, but that was just like Deliverance.

I meant delivering, as I'd taken some eggs to a neighbour. :-D

Wait, I can hear banjos, keep paddling.


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Jul 2016)

My cousin's word was mavilla ice cream and my daughter's was salt and viggoner on her chips.


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## NazNomad (16 Jul 2016)

My friends daughter used to call a Pomegranate a 'pollygrammit'.


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