I examine his square face. He stands with a single arm outstretched, reaching out for something ever-changing. With his vacant eyes and through gritted teeth he inquires, “Meep?”
I am of course talking about The Lit Drift Robot who resides about a third of the way down our home page. If you’re a regular reader, you know that Robot just wants to learn how to love. “Meep?” he calls! “Meep?” he asks. “Meep?” he pleads. Though the word is unfamiliar to me, judging from his body language and the context of his statement, I can only assume meep to mean “Will you teach me? Will you take me under your wing? Is there hope for me?”
Rather than assume that I interpreted Robot’s statement correctly, I looked up the word meep online. According to Urban Dictionary, meep is a word of many meanings ranging from “an exclamation akin to ‘ouch’ or ‘uh oh’” to an exclamation that “can be used for any purpose whatsoever” or “sums up everything.” Its origins are believed to be of The Muppet Show’s Beaker.
Though a versatile word indeed, meep is not as commonly used as… let’s say, blurgh. Unlike the more flexible meep, blurgh has a negative connotation and is often used to express frustration or disdain. There is no real instance in which you can use the word in a positive manner. What’s craziest is that when you hear the word blurgh, there’s almost no question as to what it means. It’s not even really necessary to be a fan of 30 Rock to have a full understanding of its definition and application.
How is it that made-up words are sometimes so much more expressive than the real ones? I can’t even think of what commonly used and known expression exists in the English language that is synonymous to blurgh and expresses the associated emotions so concisely. My love and respect for this word prompts a want to understand its origins but etymologizing a fake word poses an obvious challenge. Etymology is not the lesson in linguistics we need in comprehending the usefulness of a fake word, articulatory phonetics and speech perception are.
Though articulatory phonetics and speech perception are vital in the breaking down of “real” language, it is also responsible for the way you say and understand fake words. Regardless of the language you speak, there are certain parts of your mouth that are accountable for certain sounds and these certain sounds tend to connote specific emotion that is then perceived to be positive or negative – this is why we’re still able to take contextual clues from languages we don’t know and the reason we all know what meep and blurgh mean despite lack of official definition.
The best of fake words usually graduate from a fake word to a made-up word then to an invented word and then accepted into the English lexicon with its unofficial status pending until Merriam-Webster makes things official by giving it the honored title of “New Word.” It may seem kind of ridiculous that words like bootylicious have been considered in the past, but that’s before we think about how many commonly used words today were the “fake words” of our past. In my personal collection of “Top Ten Words I Say a Whole Lot,” 90% of them would be categorized under “fake” or “once fake.” The words under “once fake” are pretty surprising (although the inventors of these “once fake” words is not). Before Shakespeare, the word obscene did not exist. Seriously. Neither did epileptic or hot-blooded or puking or wormhole or even eyeball. The thought is kind of bizarre because of how stable their seat is in the English lexicon.
So who’s to say that bootylicious won’t be as commonly accepted as a respected word of the English language in the future? Perhaps when all who remember the origin die off, the word will live on in its own right (I sort of hope not but as stated earlier, I likely won’t be alive for that day).
Open Call: I’d like your favorite “fake words,” “fake words” that have graduated to “new words,” more Shakespearean influences on our vocabulary, AND your own “fake words” or disambiguations that are common among your social circle (Julia, do explain “llama,” please). Please leave them as a comment in this post!
