Wednesday Word: Shirp

[calzephyr]

Shirp - verb.

Have you ever dreamt of a word? Funnily enough last week I found myself dreaming about using LJ to post a Wednesday Word and it was...shirp.

Upon awakening, I Googled and was disppointed to find SHIRP was an acronym for a University of Saskatchewan journal program.

But a little more sleuthing and it turns out shirp is a real word, from Scots. It means to either shrink or shrivel, or have a shrunken and shrivelled appearance.

I wonder what other words my subsconscious will cough up :-)

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

Not a word I made up, but I recall experiencing a frisson of wonder and terror over the word “trondant”, which I first encountered in an OMNI magazine article questionnaire seeking to identify alien abductees: https://archive.ph/43jyV

Turns out that that was a control word the quiz authors coined to filter out pretenders and the suggestible.

[calzephyr]

Oh gosh, I haven't though about OMNI in ages!

Words are pretty useful, even made up ones :-)

[full_metal_ox]

Every word ever spoken, signed, written, or coded was made up at some point.

[prettygoodword]

That's kinda awesome.

[calzephyr]

Yeah! It was surprising I remembered the word as well :-D