Save the Words

Do you want to confuse your friends and sound super-smart at the same time? Visit Save the Words to adopt your very own obscure word. When you adopt a word, you promise to use in conversation and in writing as much as possible, so choose wisely!

Real-Life Frindle

In the children's book Frindle by Andrew Clements, a boy invents and popularizes the word frindle as a substitute for pen. He is at odds with his teacher, who goes to great lengths to stamp out the word. Of course, this only makes it more popular with the kids at his school and beyond.

So, it cracked me up to read about a high school in Connecticut that has banned the use of the word meep. This is a totally made up word, used by Beaker, Road Runner, and sometimes appearing as an expression in manga. Apparently, students at the school were uttering disruptive "meeps" and planning a "mass-meep" using Facebook. If the lesson of Frindle holds true in real life, someday we'll see meep in the dictionary!

Read the local news article, or listen to an NPR interview.