Today I Decided to Make Up a Word
From the book My Hippo Has the Hiccups
Today I decided to make up a word,
like flonk, or scrandana, or hankly, or smurred.
My word will be useful and sound really cool;
a word like chindango, or fraskle, or spewl.
My friends and my teachers will all be impressed
to learn that I’ve made up a word like extrest,
or crondic, or crambly, or squantion, or squank.
Whenever they use it, it’s me that they’ll thank.
They’ll call me a genius and give me a prize,
repeating my word, be it shimble, or glize,
or frustice, or frongry, or frastamazoo,
or pandaverandamalandamaloo.
You’ll see it on TV shows one of these days.
They’ll use it in movies. They’ll put it in plays.
They’ll shout it from rooftops! The headlines will read,
“This Kid Has Invented the Word that We Need!”
I’ll make up my word, and I’ll share it with you,
and you can tell people from here to Peru;
the old ones, the young ones, and those in between…
as soon as I figure out what it should mean.
— Kenn Nesbitt
Copyright © 2009. All Rights Reserved.
Reading Level: Grade 3
Topics: Imaginary Poems, School Poems, Wacky Weirdness, Writing
Poetic Techniques: Dialogue, Irony, List Poems, Narrative Poems, Nonsense Poems, Wordplay
Word Count: 181
From the book My Hippo Has the Hiccups
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