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Sunday, November 13, 2011

Family Lexicon

On our recent visit to our son and new daughter-in-law, Lindsey, Rob and I discovered that we had nurtured a tradition with our children which may not be appreciated by their spouses.

We had used some Crouch Family words during our children’s impressionable years that were not necessarily proper or correct which had become such a part of our vocabulary, we forgot that were neither proper nor correct.

Somewhere in Rob’s childhood, the word “Faunchy” became a term to mean ornery, upset or fussy.  I, without question, adopted the word when I married into the family.  We would use it in sentences like: “Quit ‘faunching’ around or you are going to knock over that lamp.”   OR  “He didn't get his nap today so he is really ‘faunchy' this evening.”

It works, don’t you think? 

Unfortunately, Kevin used ‘Faunch’ in a sentence while speaking to Lindsey and was quite adamant it truly was a word.  She argued that no, it was not and the debate landed them in front of the computer trying all possible spellings of the term and finally Lindsey declaring victory. 

Rob and I laughed about it with Bryan and Camille today and started thinking about some of the other Crouch jargon we have mixed into our daily language.  We came up with: “Runerwear” for underwear; “Wipperbuns” for slippers; and “Blessyoud” for a sneeze.  There were several others we chuckled over and then we discovered that all of these were cute things the kids had said when they were little that we just adopted into our everyday terminologies.   Perhaps I should notify the Webster’s Dictionary people and submit these as new and useful words for publication in their next edition.

Do you have expressions you have developed and use which only your family knows the meaning of?  How were those words/phrases developed?  How many generations have used these words?  Please use them in a sentence for me.  Otherwise, I might get faunchy!

5 comments:

Tina said...

I am constantly making up nonsense words at the spur of the moment . . . and I have to be in the moment to think them up!

So don't get faunchy on me:)

Ha! The verification word for this coment is "pawsl" now don't get all meno pawsl (or faunchy) over this message!

Georgia said...

Haha, Tina! Love it!

I am willing away the the meno pawsl symptoms which are trying to sneak up on me, but I could never be faunchy at you, you are much too sweet!

PS I still remember the blog post you did a long time ago to have us type the verification word and use it in a sentence. I think about that every time I post a comment now.

Lisa said...

When my son was young he used "am'nt I?" in a sentence. I thought hew was so clever to conjugate am and not. We don't so much have words but we do use a term that drives both of my son-in-laws crazy. Our remote has always been called the "box". Where is the box? etc. The girls make their husbands crazy because they continue the family tradition.

Lesley said...

I think we probably have a few, but the first that comes to my mind is, "would you please get the broom and the "broom thing" and sweep the floor?" The broom thing is what most people would call... the dustpan. I've called it that for years (don't know why) and I hear my kids call it the same thing.

Celia Turner said...

As a young child (2 or 3), Lindsey would always ask me to warm up her milk in the "diov" (pronounced die ov). We had no clue how she made this connection with our microwave! Also, Brock used to say, "Dad, can I use your wife?". He, of course, meant "knife"! (caution: you can put your milk in the diov, but definitely NOT your wife!)