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"Chillax!" said my nine-year old son.
"Chillax?" I asked. "Where did you pick that up?"
"On television at Grandma's."
"On which programme?"
"On 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show."
"On 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show?"
"Yes."
That's a funky name for a children's programme, I thought. I've just checked on YouTube. It looks like my parents have relaxed their TV-watching laws a bit!
And, wow! I thought: he's using portmanteau words, "chillax" being a blend of "chill (out)" and "relax". So much for the theory that bilingual children have limited vocabularies.
I get all excited when I come across what I think is a new word or neologism, thinking I can use it for my blog. "That's another blog post sorted," I think. Wrong! As soon as I check Urban Dictionary, I discover that someone else "discovered" it first and submitted it to Urban Dictionary — but years previously. Years!
Take "chillax", for example. Guess when that entered the language, according to Urban Dictionary. 2003. 2003! That's seven years ago. It took seven years to reach me? Maybe I should get out more.
But I did make a cool discovery while I was checking "chillax". The latest entry on Urban Dictionary is "Dracula sneeze".
A Dracula sneeze is when you hold your arm up over your nose and mouth, in a position similar to Dracula holding up his cape, and then sneeze into your elbow.
Just in time for Halloween!
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