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According to the book "The Story of English" by Robert McCrum William Cran, & Robert MacNeil, the "Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words; and a further half-million technical and scientific terms remain uncatalogued. "
Johnny Ling in 2001 said that "today, more than 750 million people use the English language. An average educated person knows about 20,000 words and uses about 2,000 words in a week."
Despite its widespread use, I realized that there are still many words in this world that should find themselves an entry in the dictionary thanks to what we call SNIGLETS.
Acclaimed TV host Rich Hall, during his stint in the popular 1980s HBO series titled Not Necessarily the News, had a regular segment that featured sniglets which he describes as "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should."
I was able to browse some sniglets at Bert Christensen's Truth & Humour Collection and let me share the top 5 sniglets that caught my attention:
Baldage (bald' aj) - n. The accumulation of hair in the drain after showering.
Flopcorn (flop' korn) - n. The unpopped kernels at the bottom of the cooker.
Grackles (grak' elz) - n. The wrinkles that appear on the body after staying in water too long.
Orogami (or oh ga' mee) - n. The miraculous folding process that allows Kleenexes to methodically emerge from the box one ate a time.
P-spot (pee' spaht) - n. The area directly above the urinal in public restrooms that men stare at, knowing a glance in any other direction would arouse suspicion.
If I may just share, if the definition of sniglets is that they are words that do not appear in the dictionary, but should, then I believe sniglets are also present in the Filipino language, most prevalently in gay lingo.
The Filipino gay language, also known at present as beki lingo or bekimon (beki meaning bakla or gay) has been in existence for decades and has now evolved into almost a dictionary volume in number.
Gay lingos usually come in the form of swardspeak. According to Jose Javier Reyes' book Swardspeak: A Preliminary Study, swardspeak can be compared with street slang or "salitang kanto" but is rather spoken by a "sward" or "gay male/ bakla."
On the other hand, Cynthia Grace B. Suguitan, a professor in the University of the Philippines, wrote in her research A Semantic Look at Feminine Sex and Gender Terms in Philippine Gay Lingo that "gayspeak uses words that are part of mainstream language (e.g. Filipino or English), but applies them metaphorically. As a result, the words acquire core or sense meanings very different from that of their roots."
Though one trait of gay lingo is that it changes every-so-often that some words become obsolete, outdated or out-fashioned, there are still universal classic gay lingos that remain. Here are some gay lingo sniglets that I'm sure you have most probably heard of and has been commonly used by either straight or gays these days:
Charing (int.)- just kidding! joke only!
syn.: charot, choz, chenez, chika
Chaka (adj.) - ugly
syn. chuckie, shonget, kyonget
Getz? - understood?
Kalurkey (adj./ v) - go crazy
etym.: kaloka
Taruj (adj.) - taray, winner
etym.: taray, wagi
The commonalities between the sniglets earlier mentioned and the Filipino gay linggo is that (1) they are words not found in the dictionaries and (2) they depict objects, actions, events and etc. that are not defined formally.
Two of their ironies however, is that (1) sniglets formed in the 80's are still the sniglet words at present whereas the gay linggo formed in the 80's, though still the same in meaning, now comes in different spelling. (2) The English sniglets are not commonly used unlike gay lingo which many Filipinos use or encounter almost every time.
To those who are not familiar with the present gay lingo, I leave with you, a viral youtube video of Mr. Ben Josep Persia, popularly known as Nanay Bekimon, and one of the major stalwarts of the bekimon revolution. The title of the video is "ALPABETONG BEKIMON - The ALPHABEKS" Enjoy!
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