words

[cos]

Sometimes my friends make up words or terms I want to see spread, so I use them in conversation when I can. I like to drop these words into casual conversation without explanation, if I think they make sense in context and people will understand them when they hear them used; lack of explanation conveys the message "this is a real word". But explanations have their place, so this year I posted some of them on Urban Dictionary:

• cosominate - "to sleep together", with no particular implication of sex
  drwex came up with this one, sometime in the late 90s I think. I'd been trying to get the sex out of "sleep together" for years but it just doesn't work, so I think we needed this word.


• extra arm - the one arm there's no good place for, when two people are cuddling in bed
  I think this one's been around for a long time and I don't know the source, so it doesn't really belong in this set, but I was surprised to see there was no definition of it on urbandictionary at all. Maybe it wasn't as widely used as I thought?


• alany - an unfortunate or amusing contradiction or circumstance you may be tempted to call "irony", but it's not irony
  This is my favorite of these words! dr_memory came up with it a good long time ago, mid 90s IIRC, and I've been enthusiastically spreading it ever since then. More recently, I've run into a few people who used it or knew it. Success? Or independent coinage?


• bisexual whiplash - what you get from looking at all the cute people in spring
  Another one from dr_memory.


• libby - to out someone's secret identity.
  yesthattom spontaneously used it in a conversation and then posted the conversation to his LJ; I copied the same conversation into the urbandictionary posting.


• pre-sequitur - doesn't follow what was said/written just before it, but does follow something that came earlier, so it feels like a non-sequitur but it's actually a jump in the conversation's chronology.
  Finally, this one is mine. Jocasta and I used to have conversations full of these, online and off, and since she was always introducing me to fun new words I hadn't met before (such as "pixielated") I wondered if she knew a word for this sort of thing. She didn't, so I made one up.

Enjoy them, use them, and give them some thumbs up on urbandictionary!

Comments

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

Where does "alany" come from? All I can come up with is a story involving someone named Alan.

[cos]

Click the link and all will be revealed :)

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

Well, it was a story involving somebody's name, at least.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

It's common usage comes from a song by Alanis Morrisette (sp?) who used the word irony incorrectly and incessantly.

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

Being largely computer science geeks, many of my friends 'round here will refer to "popping the (conversational) stack" for that last one. It can be used as advance warning: "Popping the stack, I actually won't be able to make it on Saturday because..." Or, it can be used after the fact to explain the apparent non-sequitur. (And it bothers me that non-sequitur wasn't in the spell checker's dictionary. :P)

[cos]

popping the stack is much more specific, at least as I've heard it used. It implies you've just added an item to the stack recently, you're popping it off, and continuing with the previous item. pre-sequitur is a broader concept, where you could be jumping back and forth across the entire conversation, without any sense of chronological order or stack structure.

[dpolicar]

In some subsets of my social circle, jumping back N levels to a previous part of the discussion is conventionally acknowledged by going "ding!"

But that's different.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

We also use 'popping the stack' in my part of the NYC social circle.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

i still use that as popping the stack- you can pop a bunch of items off the stack at once, if I recall...

[cos]

I note that urbandictionary doesn't have an entry for "popping the stack" and it should.

[blk]

I'm used to a similar thing, although mostly restricted to zephyr, as 'Starking.' :)

[coraline]

i've been using "cosominate" since before i met you... i think probably a bunch of us have invented it independently.

(i do remember talking to someone who had first encountered the word through you and it took her years to realize that it was "co-sominate" and not "cos-sominate" (i.e. specifically to sleep with cos :)

[cos]

*laugh*

I am quite sure that wex posted it to a mailing list years before I met you, and I would be surprised if there weren't enough social overlap back then that the lists he posted to would reach you. So I'd expect you to have started using the word before we met :)

[coraline]

...no, i'm talking high school :p

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Oh, I call the extra arm thing "4th arm syndrome" I thought it would be great to do a coffee table book of photographs based on this. All the positions people can cuddle in that try to get around the 4th arm problem!!!!

[dpolicar]

I first encountered the extra-arm problem in a Spider Robinson novel, where the protagonist has just lost an arm and is looking on the bright side.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

Responding here just because Spider Robinson freakin' rocks...

I call it the "fourth arm problem". DaP at some point modified this to the "Nth arm problem" to accommodate group cuddles, where N is twice the group number.

Oh, and we've been using the adjective "alanic" for some time; I don't recall any prior exposure to the noun "alany".

[mackelzinzie.livejournal.com]

hmm, I'm not sure that function is quite so constant... Sometimes both arms are in the way.

[glib-dichotomy.livejournal.com]

I love pre-sequitur, as this happens to me all the time!

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Cosominate and pre-sequitur are really awesome words. I approve.

[missionista.livejournal.com]

Alany is my least favorite of these words. I knew exactly what it meant as soon as I read it, but I think that anyone who doesn't have that cultural context (more and more people as time goes on) won't find it meaningful or useful. I think libby has the same problem. The others are all much more lasting. I love cosominate and bisexual whiplash.

[drwex]

I'm pleased you posted cosominate, and slightly embarrassed that I have to correct you - I was the one who invented the verb form of "Libby". That conversation you posted is me as "him" and a gamer friend of mine as "her".

[mackelzinzie.livejournal.com]

There is a word for pre-sequiter, but I don't remember what it is.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I'm quite partial to boobiesexual and have been describing myself as such for a couple years, now.

I use it for a little wider meaning than just wanting to play with boobies. That I like looking at entire women is included in the implication, but the lack of interest in girlbits remains.

[listgirl.livejournal.com]

ummmm . . . my entire family operates completely on pre-sequiters doesn't it?