Linguistic incident report

Words & Nonsense

Wordplay, nicknames, portmanteaus, toasts and gloriously unnecessary terminology.

The dictionary has requested a restraining order.

19 articlesNewest first · 13–19 of 19

Cartoon office with an employee adjusting an absurd brass nameplate while an HR person peers at a computer and coworkers hold coffee and sandwiches shaped like agendas.

13 office portmanteaus to call your job when you want to confuse HR

Ranked by how likely they are to make HR check your LinkedIn, how deliciously smug they sound in Slack, and how defensible you can make them if someone asks for a job description. Thirteen workplace mashups—Project + Email = Proje-mail—each comes with the perfect eyebrow-raising one-liner to drop in Slack and a theatrical out-of-office excuse to match.

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A whimsical kitchen scene: eleven stylized eggs dressed as different brunch dishes surround a chrome toaster that looks frightened behind a pile of toast. One egg has an avocado cape, another wears a hollandaise crown, a third sits in a tiny tomato pool, and one floats like a souffle. Warm sunlight, mid-century kitchen details, playful, painterly style.

Words & Nonsense Listicle

11 egg portmanteaus to rename brunch and intimidate your toaster

Eleven outrageous egg-based mashups (Eggs + Avocado = Avocadegg) with a micro-menu and one-line theatrical backstory for each so you can reorder breakfast with smug, lexical cruelty.

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Seven friends wearing zodiac-themed hats stage a mock-funeral for Bluetooth headphones in a living room while a cartoon Mercury floats above like a disco ball scattering paper text bubbles.

Words & Nonsense Listicle

7 zodiac nicknames for friends who blame Mercury retrograde for everything

Ranked by how dramatically each friend invokes Mercury before ever admitting fault: from politely blaming the cosmos to organizing a formal inquest into a mis-sent text. Each entry is a single ridiculous nickname, a one-line horoscope justification, the perfect emoji pairing to send them, and the ideal moment to drop it into conversation without triggering a full planetary audit.

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Birthday scene: a partially rock-encased laptop on a table surrounded by small plastic dinosaurs in party hats, a sedimentary-layer cake, and confetti—an absurd celebration of obsolete tech.

Words & Nonsense Listicle

5 prehistoric nicknames for the friend who refuses to update their software

A ranked, deliberately ridiculous catalogue of fossilized nicknames for the person in your life who treats software updates like relics to be admired from a safe distance. Ranked by our utterly subjective criteria: how spectacularly era-appropriate the insult poetry is, how delightfully impractical the birthday gag prop will be, and how easily the single affectionate line will keep this from turning into a tech intervention. Use one of these at your own social peril (and comedic gain).

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A smartphone cable displayed on a small velvet cushion surrounded by miniature heraldic banners, with a houseplant in the background wearing a tiny monocle (illustrated scene).

Words & Nonsense Listicle

9 charger-themed nicknames for the friend who 'accidentally' keeps your cable

Nine escalating nicknames—from 'The Velcro' to 'Battery Bandit'—each with an emoji sigil, suggested delivery context (text, sticky note, engraved keycap) and a tiny bit of petty heraldry to brand the theft forever.

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A surreal dinner-party tableau where one friend arrives wearing a crown made of clocks while others hold hourglasses and pocket watches in mock ceremony, under a lamp shaped like an alarm clock.

Words & Nonsense Listicle

11 lateness-tier nicknames for chronically late friends, ranked by affectionate cruelty

A ranked list of 11 nicknames — from the barely mischievous 'Five-Minute Phantom' to the coronation-ready 'Time Tyrant' — with recommended occasions, a cruelty (but loving) severity rating out of 10, and a tiny escalation plan for turning each epithet into a recurring, hilarious ritual. Rankings are an editorial judgment based on how theatrical, inevitable and relationship-safe the nickname feels; yes, it's petty, but it's affectionate.

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Six people around a dining table performing theatrical fork gestures — baton over tea, pretzel twirl, secret scoop, balancing spin, triple napkin tap, and an inverted-fork 'coronation' — all laughing in warm lamp light.

Words & Nonsense Listicle

6 food-based nicknames and the exact fork gesture you should use when saying them

A ranked catalogue of six edible nicknames — each with a deadpan origin blurb, the very particular fork-or-emoji flourish to perform when you say it in person, and a tiny etiquette chart clarifying when the flourish is mandatory, optional or strictly verboten. Ranked by how delicious the nickname sounds versus how socially dangerous the fork move is (we call this the dunk-to-danger ratio).

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