Are there other possible non-words that you know of?

Interesting article regarding “irregardless”. I love one quote: “The dictionary’s recognition doesn’t enroll a word as correct in the English language,” McIntyre says. “It just says this is a word that a lot of people use in English.”

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-you-think-irregardless-is-a-word

https://www.thisworddoesnotexist.com/

The Simpsons has produced a few non-words that I find humorous:

cromulent – legitimate, acceptable, valid
embiggen – to enlarge, to make bigger
avoision – the act of avoiding (Kent Brockman the newsman insists he doesn’t say evasion, he says avoision)
unfaceuptoable – that which cannot be faced up to
sacrilicious – both delicious and sacrilegious

@smudges That is true. As a linguist, you concern yourself with how people do use language, not how you think they should use it. A word like irregardless will be labeled nonstandard or proscribed, but it is a unit of language with meaning nonetheless.

What if the only people who un-ironically use a “nonstandard” word or phrase that has a standard equivalent, don’t realize there is a standard version of that word or phrase?

Inflammable is a word but shouldn’t be. Usually putting in- on the beginning means the opposite of the word but here it doesn’t. Lots of people end up in the hospital learning that.

@Lightlyseared I have never heard inflammable. That’s crazy. That is like irregardless, but more dangerous. Inflammable sounds like something a young child or ESL person might say confusing inflamed and flammable. The kind of thing where we can see the logic behind the guess, but it isn’t correct. Except, I guess it is correct in that it is in use.

@Demosthenes Those words you cited are combining two words or they sound made up in a funny way. I questioned unserious, because it sounded like un possibly was an incorrect prefix. Like when someone says uncorrect or unrational. Or, maybe a prefix can’t be used with the word. I wasn’t sure with the word serious. It was in a speech made by the Vice President of the United States who is running for President, so I figured it was likely a real word. I still think it was a rarely used word, although that is likely to change now. I think 40 years ago my grandmother would have corrected me if I said it.

@Zaku Yes! I think you make an important point, and this is part of my argument about using a dialect to communicate. It might be fine within a community, but when communicating with people outside of their community, people should switch over to more standard English that will be understood by people who use more text book English. No matter what there will be different usages and definitions of words being used because English evolves. I think Communications 101 should be taught in high school so people understand how easily people can miscommunicate.

According to local college professors, “irregardless“is a word only used by the ignorant.

I often hear “youse” as a plural for “you”. It should be a respectable word formed in the standard way for plurals and filling a gap in the language but somehow it comes across as common and not to be used in polite society.

Before Facebook came along, there was no such word as “friended.” I don’t know if technically, it’s a word now, but people say it all the time. “I friended you.” “He friended me.” “I’m unfriending her.”

OK, I’ll play a bit of devil’s advocate here and ask. Outside of some very specific circumstances, so what if people use different sounds to communicate that the hyper-erudite don’t want to recognize as “words”? Personally, I think the great beauty of language is its fluidity. I am educated and can carry on a conversation or write a treatise using the most “correct” and pretentious vocabulary there is, but I prefer not to most of the time.
Context is everything. If my intended audience understands me, I have achieved success in my intent.
I understand “unserious” just fine, and sorry, @smudges, but in a whimsical context, I love “funner”.

To answer your Q as asked, @seawulf575, yes, too many to list, by your standards, but I believe if a sound is easily comprehended by the listener it is an actual word.

There is everybody’s favorite – ain’t
You sometomes hear people talking about analyzations

The problem is this – perhaps the dictionary makers think that the word shouldn’t exist, but as soon as people are using it in common speech (Norma Loquendi, as Bill Safire used to say), the word exists and is part of our culture.

As long as people say “inflammable” it’s a word, whether Funk and Wagnall likes it or not.

@JLeslie The confusion with inflammable results from the fact that in Latin, in- means “not” (cognate with English un-) but it also just means “in” or “on” (which is the case here). inflammable is an older word than flammable and comes from the Latin word inflammare meaning “to inflame, to set on fire”. flammable was created later, to avoid confusion, but the existence of both words just creates more confusion. (The Simpsons made a joke about this too: Dr. Nick, of ambiguous foreign origin, says, as a fire approaches a tank of gas, “don’t worry, it’s INflammable!”)

Words like “incorrect” and “irrational” were borrowed from Latin via French or directly from Latin. A word like “unserious” was created later, by combining a productive English prefix with an already existing word, because even though “serious” is of Latin origin, no such Latin word “inserious” existed to be borrowed.

As we learned way back there in library school there are two kinds of dictionaries. One kind is proscriptive – how language should be used and one is descriptive – how it is being used, I think Random House is an example of the latter. Personally, I have no problem with language being malleable.

Many of the Brianian neologisms are non-words, primarily because I’m the only one that uses them.

My fondest one is fencrovanamaniasis- when the atomic or molecular structure of matter spontaneously changes, with no alchemical vertoben!

@Demosthenes Thanks for the injection of humor.

I think your argument is similar to the old Ebonics defense that Ebonics is a meld of African languages and English. The thing is, Ebonics grew from oppression, illiteracy, and isolation. I have absolutely no problem with people speaking in a dialect in their community or family.

I understand the Latin reference. I don’t know Latin, but I know Spanish, and justo in Spanish is fair and injusto is unfair. I doubt Spanish would be so quick to accept unjusto, because in English we use un. Although, I do acknowledge there is plenty of Spanglish spoken in the US, and some Spanglish in Spanish speaking countries too.

Using the wrong prefix or wrong preposition (maybe I shouldn’t use the word wrong) is a very common mistake for people who speak English as a second language. That’s fine for tourists and immigrants, it can be endearing actually. People raised in the US the mistakes can sound uneducated. It can be a tell. When I use a Yiddish word it’s a tell. Either Jewish or New York. When someone calls a fountain a bubbler it’s a tell. Most likely they are from Wisconsin. When someone says “do you want to come with” and leaves off the me at the end, it’s a tell. Chicago area. When people use unserious, I just had no idea so I asked.

^^ And in the south when they’re asking for a ride they don’t say “Will you take me to…”, they say “Will you carry me to…”

@smudges A company my husband worked for in the South had a list of words the customer service employees weren’t allowed to use, terms and phrases that were too Southern.

I just watched a YouTube Jubilee where they guess who isn’t Black in a group and I learned so much. They asked each other “let me hear your customer service voice.” Just questioning now maybe they used a different term than Customer Service, I think that was it? My memory is terrible. They stated whether they attended a PWI. Predominantly White Institution. All sorts of jargon I was unaware of. Also, how they felt in certain situations.

Ain’t, illegal, allot.

Illegal is a word. The other two are questionable.

allot is a word, if used as a verb – meant in this way rather than ‘a lot’:

give or apportion (something) to someone as a share or task:
“equal time was allotted to each” · “I was allotted a little room in the servants’ block”

^^Yeah, but people write allot meaning “a lot.” It’s the wrong word.

Just like people write yay instead of yeah. Wrong word.

Allowed instead of aloud.

Just to name a few.

@JLeslie, that’s just making mistakes, not using non-words.

True.

Edit: I wouldn’t always call it mistakes. I think a lot of the people writing the examples I named don’t know it’s incorrect. Sometimes, sure it is just writing fast and mistakes. I write your instead of you’re sometimes and I can’t believe it.

Whether they know it or not, they’re still mistakes.

all words were non words once.

I had a co-worker that had an odd pronunciation. The word was “trough”. I and everyone else pronounced it like “Troff”...cough with a t instead of a c. He pronounced it “Troth” with the long “o” sound. Again, I looked it up and that was an archaic version of the pronunciation but it was valid. I guess.

Growing up we heard and used the word tump just as we would use knock as in ” I accidentally knocked (tumped) the glass over.” Not until I was in college and discussing possible topics for a friend’s master thesis did I learn that tump was not a real word. She (who grew up in another state) knew of the word from a relative and was leaning this way for her project. It turns out that due to growing up in a community next to a steel mill and cast iron pipe company fathers brought the word home from the “shop,” as they called their workplace. Tump was born from the words tip and dump. It was used many many times every day over there. My friend did do her research on this nonword and she now holds two masters degree, and I do not use the word anymore.

Update: It appears that the word is now a real word meaning a mound OR ‘to tip over
something.’ I do not plan to add it back into my daily vocabulary.

@SnipSnip Some of the regional idioms can tell where you are from. I grew up with sodas being called “pop”. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized this was localized to one small part of the country (or was at the time). In Georgia, they called sodas “Coke”. It didn’t matter what flavor. “You want a Coke?” “Sure” “What kind do you want?” “I’ll have an orange.”

^That is true. :)

Mortal Kombat.

Covfefe.

@Demosthenes “The Simpsons made a joke about this too: Dr. Nick, of ambiguous foreign origin, says, as a fire approaches a tank of gas, ‘don’t worry, it’s INflammable!’)”

And then, when the inevitable happens: ”Inflammable means flammable? What a country!”

One of my favorite lines.