In the staffroom at work recently, I was fortunate enough to be shown what has become one of my favourite Portuguese items, guaranteed to put more than a mere grin on my face during even the toughest of working days. An English-Portuguese dictionary, old enough for the front and back covers and several pages to be missing, but legible nonetheless. I flicked through, and discovered that on each page there were several English words which, to put it bluntly, were not English words. A merry afternoon was spent passing the dicitionary round the room to see who could come up with the best new words, and by the end of the day, my stomach muscles were truly aching. It was like Douglas Adams´ The Meaning of Liff, only somehow funnier, as we imagined the hordes of unsuspecting Portuguese proudly testing these words on sniggering English speaking friends and colleagues.
While studying the other day I noticed that my own dictionary contained some particularly suspicious-looking vocabulary, and decided that, for the amusement of my readers, it was only fair to share some of these little Jabberwocky-style gems*.
Can you guess the true definition of any of these words? (and no, none of them are rude)
- Flocky (adj)
- Sice (noun)
- Tony (adj)
- Bumbledom (noun)
- Twitting (noun)
- Trig (adj)
- Gittern (verb)
- Flump (noun)
- Jib (verb)
- Sot (adj)
No? Not figured them out yet? Aww... twist my arm and you might just convince me to tell you...
* To maintain the integrity of this blog I guess it´s only fair to mention that I cross-checked these words on an online dictionary and, sadly, some of them are genuine. But they are still so damn obscure and funny-sounding that they are all still worthy of mention.
