Word to Your Motha: Suckily

I’m not typically one to like new, made-up words. I’m no fan of amazeballs, awesome sauce or asshat. I’m more of a traditionalist. I think we should bring back henceforth, fortnight and hither. But every now and then, where appropriate, I revise my stance. Now is such a time and suckily such a word.

I understand suckily is not a real word, but it should be, and that’s the difference. Many, many other words have made it into the modern day lexicon without my consent or approval, and they are all wrong. Take “favorited,” for example. I deeply despise this word mostly because there’s no such thing. Favorite is not a verb and therefore cannot be favorited. Then there’s “friended.” Again, no such thing. Please allow me, if you would, Mr. Zuckerberg, to illuminate something for you and the 90 billion twenty-year-olds who currently believe “friended” is a valid part of the English language. The word is “befriended.” Could you please change that on Facebook? Thanks! That would make me feel so much better. 

I was never particularly enthralled with snarky although I recognize its popularity and appeal. Still, it seemed to me we already had so many other words – words like sarcastic, sardonic, satirical – that served the same purpose, and now these perfectly good words are going to waste. It’s a shame, really. I hate to see a good word go to waste. I’m aware I’m probably on the wrong side of history on this one, but sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in. 

What I don’tbelieve in, however, is the name of the Canadian hockey team, the Toronto Maple “Leafs.” Um, I think the word you’re looking for here is leaves. You may not know this, Mr. General Manager/Billion Dollar Owner of the team, sir, but the plural form of leaf is leaves. Just FYI. And, you can’t change the English language just because you don’t like the way a word looks on the team’s logo.

Then there’s “bling.” Originally, I didn’t like the word, but my position on it has evolved over time. I’ve come to realize certain situations in life call for “bling” specifically and exclusively. It’s just simple fact. Sometimes no other word truly captures the sentiment quite like bling. I know that now. 

To be sure, I have some new or made up words/phrases I love, but they must meet 3 specific criteria: 1. sound like they should be words; 2. be funny; 3. be ghetto. For example, I absolutely love cray-cray, boo lovin, pop tags, pop some caps, all up in my grill, for shizzle, boo-yah, word to your motha (obviously) and its shortened form, word. I also love more modern words like twork by Kerstin Auer (tweeting + working = tworking – makes perfect sense); tweeple by Tracy at Momaical (twitter + people = tweeple, again smart, efficient use of language); redneckonize and a dolla makes me holla (both Honey Boo Booisms – oh, yes, I did just work Honey Boo Boo into another post); Honey Boo Booisms, and, finally, yeah boooyee (remember that from the 90’s? I apologize. I don’t really like that phrase, but every time I recall people saying it, I crack up). 

I also now love and forever will use suckily. I happened upon creating it one recent day when a friend sent an email asking how the writing (on the stupid book) was going, and as you might imagine (since I called the stupid book the stupid book), not well. The only word I could think of to fully express my condition was “suckily.” Yes! Suckily. That was it. Suckily perfectly described my experience. So I wrote it down and thought, “How is suckily not a word? It needs to be a word.”

The world needs suckily, and suckily needs, nay, deserves its rightful place in the world. And it will have it, dammit, if I have to do it myself. 

So, world, I give you…

Suckily – adv. To suck but as used to describe a verb.

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photo credit: Sybren A. Stüvel via photopin cc