Turns out that when you Build Your Own Pizza online with Dominos, you can choose from “meats” and, in an interesting turn-of-phrase, “unmeats.” Yep, rather than your expected veggies or non-meat, Dominos chose to go with unmeats. I love this word choice in a way that isn’t entirely rational. I mean, I should recoil at the “trying too hard to be hipness” of it all, but it made me smile. And I think that’s the point. Whatever you’re writing, it should be authentic, and sometimes that might mean making up a word or two.
I had a suite-mate in college, a free-spirited modern dancer who invented the word “limble”—a mash-up of flexible and limber. College is but a dim and distant memory, but I still remember Cindy’s uncanny ability to put a fresh spin on language. While there are plenty of new words (including “tweet” and “bromance”) that make me cringe, unmeats isn’t one of them. Neither is kinnearing, which is defined as “to take a candid photograph surreptitiously, especially by holding the camera low and out of the line of sight.” It was coined by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee of the Yarn Harlot blog when she attempted to take a photograph during an encounter with the actor Greg Kinnear at an airport.
So the next time you’re looking for just the right word, maybe it’s because it’s doesn’t exist yet. Go for it, and don’t be afraid to be limble with your word choice.
