Monday 17 March 2008

Fun Monday #13


This week's host is Nikki and My Husband Calls Me Weird and this is her assignment:

1.) I don't know about you, but my family is great at creating strange words that only we know the meaning. Some were created when the kids were first learning to talk, others came about when our tongues were twisted and the word came out funny. Either way, the words stuck and we still use them in our daily conversations. What created words does your family use?! Please share the story behind the word if you remember. If you don't have a made up word then tell us about the unspoken way you communicate with someone. Do you and your significant other have a look that means "This party is boring, lets split" or do you have a look that your kids know means their butt is in serious trouble? Please share!! And a picture of the look would be very entertaining!

OR/AND

2.) In honor of St. Paddy's Day, please share your worst green beer story!

I have no idea what green beer is so will stick to the first one!

We have a few spoonerisms that we use in our house. (After last week's Fun Monday you must be wondering whether we ever use proper English!)

Chish and Fips (Fish and Chips) - Someone, and I think it was my Mother, came out with this backwards phrase many many years ago and it's just stuck

Distructions - We use this one instead of "instructions". It seems more appropriate somehow.

Fsh - as in "what do you call a fish with no eyes - Fsh" Yes, corny but it makes me giggle and it has also now become part of our regular vocabulary.

The next two came about after a very drunken evening with friends. We had been out for the day on one of said friend's boat on the River Thames. At some stage we came across a bevy of swans who were having a very bad day, resulting in a major swan punch-up. Fast forward to later that evening when much alcohol had been imbibed and I came out with "Those vons swighting!". Amid the hilarity that followed some bright spark, sticking to the German sounding theme, came out with "Herr Rons" for Herons. That evening went down in the annuls of history and both phrases remain with us to this day.

UPDATE: I forgot one! As I was just preparing dinner I remembered another one we use regularly - "indegrents" for ingredients. No idea where that one started!

Head over to Nikki's to find out what the other FMers have to say today!

20 comments:

  1. Ah You have jogged my memory embee often uses these~ had totally forgotten!

    'fsh' is a good one and the German sounding bird theme is very clever LOL!

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  2. Now I am reassured because I had never heard about green beer either ! It must be something typical American. I like the Chish and Fips and also the distructions, that could be used in my family too, lol !
    I had some difficulties with this FM because we don't speak english here but I also found something in German.

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  3. Good ones. Gotta love spoonerisms. (And good thing yer man had an interesting name. Wouldn't be the same if they were jonesisms.)

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  4. Oh wow, I never even thought of the spoonerisms. Well done! I understand these very well.

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  5. LOL! I like Distructions!

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  6. Token American ('Murcuhn) here. To celebrate St. Pat's bars will add some green food coloring to the pitcher of beer - going green.

    I neglected to sign up for Fun Monday, but will enjoy everyone's responses. This is a great start - fsh is such fun!!!

    all the best-
    Patience

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  7. We use "distructions" in my house, too.

    Beer with green food coloring is disgusting. St. Patrick's Day is big here in St. Paul/Minneapolis. You can't get a decent pint because all the bars are full of people wearing t-shirts that proclaim themselves to have been temporarily re-christened O'Nordstrom and O'Mancini, or MacBernstein. They are all waving huge foam shamrocks and wearing large green top hats like movie leprecauns with shamrocks on stalks sticking out of the hats like antennae. The smell of overcooked corn beef and cabbage permeates the air.

    Every year, the slogan is "Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day". I've always thought it very strange. There's no day in the year when I (Murphey, O'Cool, Harrigan, O'Halloran) pretend to be Norwegian.

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  8. Distructions...I like that one! Who needs proper English? Spoonerisms are much more funner!

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  9. Distructions run RAMPANT at my house!!! I don't think any of us ever read the instructions properly - we always wind up having to unscrew something to put it right.

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  10. i say constructions instead of instructions sometimes!

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  11. I love the chish and fips - as fun to say as hear!

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  12. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I laughed out loud while reading this, so fun! I love the fsh and distructions. Will definitely be using that last one often!

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  13. fsh is my favorite.... tho distructions sounds like something that my son would have come up with.

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  14. Your distructions reminds me of a sadistics class I took once uponce a time.

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  15. Well at least you could repeat the new vocabulary coming out of drunken revelry! And you remembered it as well--someone in the crowd must have not been THAT drunk!

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  16. Green beer is scarily popular in the USA, especially Ann Arbor, Michigan (and, I suppose, other college towns) where the local (non-Irish) college students spend half a week drinking in celebration. Green beverages, especially green beer, is considered a good idea, for some reason which I still cannot fathom after almost a decade living in this green beer obsessed town.

    It's mostly the non-Irish wishing they were Irish by "greening" themselves to stupid degrees while the Irish and part-Irish Americans laugh at the sheer stupidity around them. Like Ari said, you can't get a decent thing to drink, either, unless you prepare in advance at home.

    I like to refer to it as the Irish Revenge. I'm part Irish (and about 9 or 10 other things) and find it highly amusing, as we don't have people running around in berets, drinking wine and waggling baguettes every July 14th and whatnot, so why the Irish obsession?

    Thanks for the spoonerism memories...my family has TONS of spooneristic words. My grandmother used to read storybooks of spooneristic stories to my mom and her siblings growing up, and a lot of the phrases from the those stories are still in my family's collective vocabulary, a good 50 years after we first came upon them! Also, my family has slightly spooneristic brains to begin with, so we constantly make up our own spoonerisms quite by accident in everyday coversation.

    I should've joined this Fun Monday...we have lots of fun words in my family and in my circle!

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  17. I love the fsh..fish with no eyes!!

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  18. I loved the fsh...made me laugh out loud! We also follow the distructions. Just seems to work better.

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  19. Ha for funny!! I have used destructions before..especially if we buy something from kmapart(Kmart)!!!

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  20. Those are all too cute! I need to get a chalkboard to write down all the funny things my friend and I say when we are drinking - I can't ever remember them the next day.

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