Perhaps you will know by now that I have a fondness for the made-up word. Perhaps not. Either way, it doesn't matter, because I do, in fact - verily, verily - have that fondness of which I speak. Where they come from can always change - sometimes it's because of my eardrum failing me at the opportune time (as with "Periwander," which I always thought was a line in Bob Dylan's Tambourine Man. It's not.), and sometimes it's just the result of a lack of sleep. The words I have for you tonight fall under that second category.
The first is the Lowperbole. A "lowperbole," unlike its exaggerated counterpart, the hyperbole, is to be used in describing those times when a story or event is accepted as a fabrication. It's the reaction to a supposed exaggeration, in other words. For instance, you come home from school and Ma tells you that the local rabbit ate your whole cabbage patch doll and has started bouncing off neighborhood walls. Knowing what you do about Ma's tendency to fabricate, you create the lowperbole version in your mind to determine what really happened: the rabbit ate a shriveled scrap of last night's twice-boiled, thrice-baked red cabbage, and now he's making progress hopping along on his disjointed back leg. The reality, of course, will be somewhere in between, but the lowperbole is both a natural and healthy stage in the reasoning process.
Next we have a creation of just yesterday: "Womandatory." The definition of this one is a bit more subjective, so I'll have to give it to you in context and let you figure it out from there:
Jenkins comes back to his room after a long day and remembers his mother's request of that morn' - "Jenkins, before you brush your tusks, be sure to drink a can of this" - and she hands him some V8. Jenkins rolls his eyes, but obliges his kind mother's wishes, swigging the can just before bed. "Why are you drinking that?" his brother Meriwether asks. "Ma says it's mandatory," Jenkins grumbles back. "It's not," comes Meriwether's reply, "it's womandatory."
And such is the case of any obligatory action that compromises your manhood.
(Note the horror on the young boy's face...and the evilness that radiates from his mother. I'm eternally grateful that my own mother never poured orange juice out with any such facial expression...)
