Remember Sniglets? List Of Words That Should Have Been In The Dictionary

By | June 9, 2020

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Rich Hall. (Photo by Walt Disney Television via Getty Images Photo Archives/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images)

Comedian Rich Hall gave us the "sniglet" -- defined as (remember?) "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should." Seeking to name the nameless things and behaviors we witness every day, Hall created a cottage industry that began with a segment on HBO's ahead-of-its-time show Not Necessarily The News and grew into a series of books and other gift items. Rich Hall did other stuff -- he was on the popular comedy show Fridays, and later a cast member of Saturday ight Live -- but Sniglets like "strumble," "bozone," "lactomangulation," "snorfing," "snackmosphere," and "profanitype" are his claim to fame.

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That bar separating grocery orders is a spratchett. Source: (wikipedia)

The English language has more than 170,000 words that are in current use, and the second edition of the Oxford English dictionary lists more that 600,000 word forms, although not all of them are currently used. Somehow though, all of these words are not enough. Gelett Burgess published Burgess Unabridged: A New Dictionary of Words You Have Always Needed in 1914. This collection of neologisms was followed by a 1963 essay comprised of plausible definitions for real place-names published in The Jenguin Pennings. Douglas Adams published something similar in his 1983 book, The Meaning of Liff; his concept arose while traveling with John Lloyd. Lloyd produced Not the Nine O’Clock News and the concept was sold to America. In America, the show became Not Necessarily the News and this show adopted the made-up word definition concept as well, calling it Sniglets.