SoOo now, let's all be trendy and cool and throw tastic at the end of all our sentences. I think that would be postastic.
But seriously, in about five minutes aren't people going to figure out how dumb that is? I'm all for changing words and grammar to add to the voice, but I think there should be a line.
I think wenchtastic crossed that line. I think that cirulation is so recycletastic, and garbolitious. For shizzle.
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But seriously, in about five minutes aren't people going to figure out how dumb that is?
I think that's the definition of 'trendy.'
Also, I think the five-minute timer on a cooltastic word has beeped the moment a national circulation publishes it. You can use it as a regular word now, but if you use it for coolness effect, you'll look like a poser (spelling courtesy of Urban Dictionary, which is very cooltastic, of course).
And Bart Simpson pretty early on coined 'craptacular', as I recall.
Are these precedents?
I'll have to be on the lookout for the 'tastic' trend. Haven't seen it yet. 'Wenchtastic' sounds pretty bad to my ear though.
I remember walking in a department store a while ago, following behind a couple of middle-school aged kids. I was fascinated by the fact that 1) I could hear what they were saying clearly, 2) they were American, and 3) I could not understand a WORD they were saying, as it was all slang. Amazing.
Thongs for the memories...
Lately people have been attacking me for using the word funner. Yes I know that more fun is more correct, but funner is more fun.
I prefer to put -freakin'- in the middle of things, instead of adding -tastic. That's just fan-freakin'-tastic.
where I come from thongs are footwear and the other is a g-string. I don't know what the 'g' stands for, however I did note that Bach wrote a piece called 'Air on a G String' which is puzzling.
bach: putting the 'rock' back into baroque
[This message has been edited by Andrew_McGown (edited September 13, 2009).]
Swords crashed against dragon flesh, and the great beast opened her massive jaw and unleashed a craptacular burst of fire. Bodies burned and fell to the ground, one wenchtastic arm perturding through blood coated teeth.
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Swords crashed against dragon flesh, and the great beast opened her massive jaw and unleashed a craptacular burst of fire. Bodies burned and fell to the ground, one wenchtastic arm perturding through blood coated teeth.
Ew. No, that's like five kinds of wrong. I've found that part of the answer to a lot of when and how-many-questions is: balance. Use trendy words too close and too many times and three years down the road you sound outdated and a bit 'funny', like a grandma might sound to a tween.
I think you can use them, but your character should fit the word. I don't see James Bond-ish spies saying "Craptacular work, Q. Just splendorrific."
[This message has been edited by Nicole (edited September 14, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by genevive42 (edited September 14, 2009).]
I'm inclined to the theory-and-practice that, if you need a word or phrase for a particular use in your story, go ahead and invent one. It's worked in the past.
(I tend to be distracted by hunts for the origin of words. Take "genevive42"'s phrases. Some I can trace here and there---"boondoggling" from Tagalog, presumably dating from the American experience in the Phillipines (I think); and "fashizzle" from Double Dutch (also I think); "confabulating" and "fundiferous" in the style of Lewis Carroll's made-up words (but not, I think (also again) from Carroll's work itself); "craptacular," maybe, from "The Simpsons.") Other origins elude me altogether.)
Fundiferous I made up.
Fashizzle was from whatever rapper was adding 'izzle' on to everything a few years back. Was that Snoop Dog? You knew the trend was dead when he was on tv teaching it to Barbara Walters.
Boondoggle is also in the dictionary. If you're right about the Tagalog origins robert, then I am impressed. (I certainly didn't have a clue when I used it.) I wanted to use horwswoggle too but couldn't figure out how to work it in.
"Well, the client just went and dumped a metric buttload of craptacular requests on us..."
[This message has been edited by Rhaythe (edited September 15, 2009).]
A similar search of "craptacular" does turn up some sites that attribute it to "The Simpsons." (Remember "kwijibo?")
"Fashizzle" pops up with a couple that attribute it to Snoop Dog---but with many more references.
"Boondoggle" is attributed to "U. S. slang"---I think it might come from Tagalog, but am less certain with more research. I might be thinking of the somewhat-similar-shaped word "boondocks," which does derive from Tagalog.
Darn, I thought I had come up with a cool new word.
Making up words can get pretty demmuggledited, especially when you come up with a definition for a word that already has an old one. Perhaps you came up with the word all by yourself and someone else got it too. (Which happens pretty frequently with logical extensions of words like fantackular, which I made up but then years later found it said in a movie made before I was born.)
I also made up the word inflammable and made it mean non-flammable, but it turned out that it really means flammable (false story.)
Then again, any word you think you made up, probably someone already has, and probably with a different meaning.
(I wonder if Rowling knew? Probably she knows now...)
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The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold wet day.
I could go on, but I'm sure you're all quite impressed enough.
Melanie
[This message has been edited by Unwritten (edited September 17, 2009).]
I think Rowling knows more and less than she says.