Playing with words

One of the joys of being a writer is making up new words. Yes, we have the creative license to invent words.

I've sprinkled some here and there in my fiction writing over the years. They are words that have jokingly sprung up in conversation with friends. Or words created when I can't think of a way to describe someone, some action or some place and I combine two parts of a word into one.

Part of the fun is mixing and matching various word stems. You never know what you might come up with.

Here are some examples of words/phrases that I've used in my novels that probably won't turn up in Webster's dictionary anytime soon.

Geeksome: When a guy is geeky and handsome. Used in my fourth novel, Take the Lead.

Slore: A super horny guy that always hangs out at Score, a South Beach gay bar. The word is combination of slut and Score.

Used a few times in my second novel, Miami Manhunt which takes place mostly at Score where friends Ray, Ted and Brian meet up each Friday and become slores.  It's also used in Take the Lead.

Hangear:  The act of hanging out. This is a Spanglish/Cuban slang. When two friends hang out by doing a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y nothing like washing clothes, drying those clothes, folding said clothes, walking one's dog, driving to Cambridgeside Galleria Mall just to walk and talk.

Used in my third novel, Beantown Cubans to describe what Cuban buddies Tommy and Carlos typically do in Cambridge and Boston as they talk about their life.

Beantown Cuban: What I used to be. A Cuban or Cuban-American who lives in greater Boston or is from Boston. (It's also the name of this blog/site.  Beantown Cuban, one of the few but proud.

OCD: Obsessive Cuban Disorder.  It's what Tommy Perez says he has in the first chapter of Boston Boys Club.

"But some say I have another kind of OCD: Obsessive Cuban Disorder, since I manage to lace my everyday conversations with Cuban references or inject them into my feature stories."

Cupido: A Spanglish term for Cupid.

Example: Oye Cupido, I'm standing right here, shoot me with your arrow already.

Chico lit:  Fun, lighthearted genre of contemporary fiction aimed at Hispanic gay guys and their friends. I tossed this term around a lot when I first published Boston Boys Club, as my version or answer to chica lit (Latina fiction.)

Mr. KY:  So this was a nickname I gave to Kyle, the former reality TV model character from my first novel, Boston Boys Club.

The KY is a play off his name but it was also used this way in the book: "Kyle (we call him KY for a sloppy KY Jelly incident inside a hot tub during a threesome on one of the most-talked-about Real Life ... Mr. KY spots us right away."

Do you have a made-up word or phrase that you and your friends use? Feel free to comment below