The Wordinary: An Introduction

We all have hobbies.  Some of us like to collect stamps, crochet, struggle through Sudoku puzzles or fervently bake their way through their Grandma's old recipe books.  Others sew patchwork quilts, take long bicycle rides, watch copious amounts of bad reality television, or plan imaginary marriage ceremonies to Ryan Gosling while simultaneously practicing what their signature will look like post conduction of said ceremony.  Whilst I may or may not have dabbled in any number of the above (cough), I have one hobby which takes precedent on my procrastination list (closely followed by "Pinning" of course).  Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce you to the wonder of:

 Word Amalgamation.  

It needs no in depth explanation.  One simply takes two words (or three even, the more the merrier - it'll be slightly harder to decipher but we like a challenge) that fit together rather easily, thereby creating a new  word to enhance and enrich ones vocabulary.  An example:

My lovely Mum's name is Shona.  Sometimes my brother and I like to light heartedly make fun of her just to show her how much we really do love her.  This is all fine and dandy until Shona decides to fight back.  If she manages to come back at us with a scathing retort we call it getting "Shoned"; as in, getting "owned" by "Shona".  E.g. "Damn, you just got Shoned, girl!".  See how this works?  Doesn't it sound like fun? (I mean the word amalgamation part, not the getting Shoned.  That's not fun.  It's actually quite embarrassing.)

The idea for this hobby came about in the workplace by accident.  My colleague referred to a small white dish as a "ceramekin" and I automatically assumed she was some kind of hilarious genius who had merged two words to so adequately describe said item: a ceramic ramekin.  Alas, she had merely erred and truly believed that to be it's name.  The phenomenon was explained and thus began my hobby.  Which leads me to the point of this rambling.

I have decided to add a weekly feature, whereby I share a word amalgamation - either invented by myself, or fellow Word Amalgamation Enthusiasts (WAE).  I realise this exercise predates the "ceramekin" incident: Brangelina anyone? I will be leaving examples such as those out of the Wordinary however, for obvious reasons.

"Wordinary!" you say? "I see what you've done there!" You exclaim.  Welcome to the game friends.  I have decided to call the collection of amalgamations the "Wordinary" - the combination of "ordinary" "words" with a slight homage paid to the "dictionary". 

I will be featuring one word every week.  If you have some potential entries for The Wordinary please e-mail me: as a dedicated WAE I am more than willing to delight in new amalgamations and will happily post them with a link to your website/blog etc.  You can send them to kirstyhelen@gmail.com.

(One of my favourites! Cushion from this Etsy store).