4 Words That Someone Should Have Invented by Now

By the time I made it to college, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what qualities I found attractive in a woman. I like my women like I like my coffee -- hot, just a little bit sweet, black (but I'm also fine if it's tan, or white [I often put too much milk into my coffee, but that's OK]), likes movies, tells funny jokes, watches too much television, appreciates my funny funny dances, is impressed with how fast I am and gets along well with my dog.

The perfect cup of coffee/... woman?

(I'm not great at metaphors.)

My point is that, by a certain age, I thought I knew the basic, superficial things that I found attractive in a person. "No more surprises in the attractiveness department" was a phrase I probably said out loud.

Then all of that changed. One night, I was on a double date with my buddy and some women that he knew from a place (I'm not great at remembering details). We went to the beach, because that's where poor people go when they want to be romantic. This particular beach had a bunch of large rocks, and because I wanted to impress my date (and because I'm crazy good at climbing and jumping), I spent some time climbing and subsequently jumping from rock to rock. In accordance with a clause in the tenuous laws that balance the universe, I'm not actually allowed to be impressive in front of women, so naturally I slipped off one of the rocks and sliced the ever-loving crap out of my hand.

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"Nah, I'm fine, baby, I like it better this way. So, like what's your sign?"

I tried to walk it off like I was fine, as if bleeding was just one of the cool guy tricks I'd perfected after years of practice, and that everything would be OK if everyone would just promise not to look at me, but my date calmly washed the wound, and before I could say anything else, she ripped a long shred of cloth from the T-shirt I was wearing with her bare hands and made a makeshift tourniquet out of it. She wrapped it tight around my hand and, when I winced, said "Don't be a pussy."

And that's when I figured out Yes. That. I am also looking for that in a woman.

The first beat was "Wow, that was hot" and the second beat was "Really? I'm into that? Huh." That sort of thing happens all the time in life. You think you know what you're looking for, and then someone does something that makes you realize, for the first time, that you're extremely attracted to that particular thing. Previously, I had no idea that the kind of woman who could completely Rambo a shirt and then make fun of me was attractive to me, but after that night, obviously of course it was always true.

It's when something both surprises and arouses, and I'd like there to be a word for this.

Suggested Word(s)

I wanted to see if I could combine "wow" and "arousal," but I kept getting "awowsal," which, when read out loud, sounds like a baby is adorably trying to say "arousal," and I do not like that. I do not. So ...

Surprouse, surprousing, surprousal, surproused (portmanteau of "surprise" and "arouse")

"I thought I wanted a sweet, girl-next-door type, and then this chick at Taco Bell yelled at a cop and called him a fucking asshole. Totally surprousing moment. It turns out a lady who screams 'fucking asshole' is way better than a girl next door, for me."

This is a slightly complicated concept to explain, so I'm going to use charts, like Christina does when she talks about shitty drivers.

You're that sexy blue car. You're waiting patiently, sexily, at a stop sign, waiting to make a left turn so you can be on time for the clubs, or the big game, or the town magic show, or wherever it is that sexy people go.

The red car is the other guy, and he's the only other guy moving on the road. Lights in either direction prevent other cars from moving, so it's just you two. You feel pretty good.

That red car isn't going very fast at all, certainly slower than you or any other normal driver would go. Unfortunately, Red's going just fast enough that it would be unsafe for you to try and get out onto the street. Which is fine.

Until you realize that, while he drives, the lights change, allowing plenty of other cars onto the road. And while he's going too fast for you to attempt your turn, he is traveling just slow enough for the newly released cars behind him, all of which are traveling at a normal speed, to catch up.

He's an almost impossibly perfect version of a frustrating driver. If he was going slower, you could safely make your turn before he reached you, and if he was going just an ass hair faster, you could make your turn after he passes you but before the long line of other cars catches up. But he's not. He is in that perfect nexus of too slow and too fast that forces you to wait for a big chunk of cars.

And I need a word for this, because I need something to scream out of my car window when I see it happening. When I get caught in this time-sucking trap, I usually just scream, "No, no, hurry! Or slow down! Change your speed in either direction and you will maximize the level of efficiency for the most amount of drivers involved right now!"

And that's obviously in the top five of the most clunky things one could shout whilst driving.

I'm not arguing for an insult we could yell at people like Red (I've found that "dickhead" is a pretty good fit); I'm saying we need to collectively come up with a word for this kind of behavior, then teach that word in Driver's Ed to make the road a more efficient place. Because if someone forgot to put their headlights on, I can flash my high beams (the unofficial shorthand for "Turn on your lights"), or if a cop is ahead, I can tap my brakes a few times to flash my brake lights for the drivers behind me (the unofficial shorthand for "Cops are ahead, stop keeping up with me because I am likely speeding"), or if someone isn't paying attention and is frozen in thought at a green light, I can honk my horn (the unofficial shorthand for "C'mon, you ass, I have a sexy magic show to get to"). All I want is a word (or some other kind of communicative car noise or car action, like flashing high beams) to make the drivers like Red up there aware of what they're doing.

Suggested Word(s)

Gloll (There's no etymology to this word. It just feels like an appropriate phonetic representation of the act of moving slow but not slow enough. Gloll, ya know?)

"Hey, buddy, you're really glolling up the road."

Alternate:

Let someone know he's glolling up the street by turning your hazards on and honking your horn. This won't communicate the problem, but it'll probably scare him enough to make him slow down. Use the opportunity to coolly pull out into the street, like the champion of driving that the universe willed you to be.

Have you ever seen someone who, based on absolutely no context clues or any interaction, you thought was a total jerk? Someone you saw around a lot and, without even talking to him, you thought, "Oh, here's this asshole." There is no feeling in the world that is more gratifying than seeing that person be a dick to someone else.

After you've already decided he was a dick.

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"Wait, you're actually a jerk? I wasn't just projecting? Oh, YES!"

It's not quite the same thing as confirmation bias, because with a confirmation bias at least your pre-established bias is based on something. You read a story about a politician from a certain party pooping in his pants in front of everybody and a part of your brain lights up in a pleasing way because you already hated that particular party based on your experience.

With this, however, there's no experience or absolutely anything else to give you a bias. A new couple moves into your apartment complex, you hate them, and then you're just THRILLED when you hear them being rude to a poor pizza delivery man.

Once you learn that your baseless suspicions were right, you can feel free to openly and actively hate this couple without feeling petty or irrational. You can really focus in on how much you don't like this couple. It's the best.

Suggested Word(s)

Validatred (portmanteau of "validated" and "hatred"), Hatrad (portmanteau of "hatred" and "rad")

"You know my neighbor? The guy whose teeth I hate? It turns out he's a pederast. I feel completely validatred, but, more importantly, we really should call the police."

It's not a size thing, either. I'm not saying "Ugh, I hate being stuck behind larger people." This transcends size. There are simply just some people who, through some ancient form of nightmare magic, have perfected the art of effectively blocking anyone behind them from passing. And these people are always slow.

You'll be walking through a mall -- a huge, open place -- and then you'll get stuck behind someone on their cellphone who pauses, turns, and wobbles, and even though it's only one person in a giant mall, they still SOMEHOW have boxed you out at every turn. Maybe they wave their arms a lot, or maybe they have a tendency to suddenly wander from side to side. Whatever the case may be, they have, consciously or unconsciously, perfected the art of blocking you from getting ahead of them. You'll just have to duck into the food court until they leave the mall/your life.

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Suggested Word(s)

Walkblock

"I was trying to get from the gym to the office and this little idiot on rollerblades totally walkblocked me the whole way. You'd think the rollerblades would've made him faster, but they didn't. Might as well have been glollerblades."

Daniel O'Brien is Cracked.com's senior writer (ladies), and has a troubling tendency to make bizarre words up on the spot without providing any explanation (glorbonauts). Follow him on Twitter. Or don't!

For more from Dan, check out 6 Movie Formulas That Must Be Stopped and 5 Steps to Writing Successful Erotic Fiction.