Unfamiliar word to me

[ron ll]

Had lunch yesterday with an old high school classmate. He’s one of those people who sometimes purposely distort words for fun. In the course of conversation he used the word “defugalty” a couple of times, as in, my brother and I had a defugalty and we don’t speak to each other any more. Knowing his sense of humor, I thought he was purposely mangling “difficulty”. But I looked it up, and to my surprise it’s a real word, but usually used by old people. Any other old folk here who use it?

[Paul Pless]

the urban diction says its used by old finnish people, who perhaps have trouble pronouncing difficulty


lol

[ron ll]

My friend is Bohemian, as in ancestors from Bohemia, not from The Village.

[Yeadon]

Fugue

a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.

I think the act of “de-fugueing” might mean that at one time you worked well together with another but that has stopped.

From there mayyybe you can get to defugalty.

[CWSmith]

No, but I do have fun writing alternate lyrics to songs. You know, like the classic, "There's a bathroom on the right..."

[Jim Bow]

My late bro in law (RIP) used the word comterful, instead of comfortable. It’s now a family word.

[ron ll]

No, but I do have fun writing alternate lyrics to songs. You know, like the classic, "There's a bathroom on the right..."

Fogerty had some good ones.

[Jim Mahan]

I use defugalty. My old man used to say it. I don't think I've ever seen it in print before, though. I'da spelled it differently. Diffugalty. Accent on the fugalty.

This:

defugalty
noun

an inconsistency, esp. with regard to forms of communication (i.e. text documents, radio or video transmissions).

Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
More at Wordnik

Lately I've been psyching myself out about being old enough to start worrying about dementia, and a possible clue or pre-symptom, maybe, is that I've gotten to where I'm not as confident in my ability to spell things correctly. And I sometimes need to take a deep pause before I can recall the word I'm looking for. So it's now a habit, when I write, to pop open an internet window and do a search on the word I'm not sure about, just to see duckduckgo tell me, 'Including results for abstruse—Search only for "obstruse"?

One of the things I admire about the Bilge and our denizens is that occasionally a word I've never heard before pops up in some thread. Thank you, and thank duckduckgo for being my on-tap dictionary and thesaurus. And I've always been fond of spontaneous neologismizing.

[Jack Loudon]

My dad used the word "scrinuveous" meaning 'cheap' or 'thrifty'. I don't know how it's spelled as I've never seen it in print. A google search with alternate spellings turns up nothing. Dad was born 1918, American English-speaking ancestors from way back. The word does roll off the tongue nicely.

[Breakaway]

Those of my grandparents generation would say, " folly" instead of, " follow." They'd also say, " baa-troom"," instead of. "bathroom." And others.

Folly me here and clean the baa-troom before you go out chasing goils, ya bug-ah! I want that terlet to shine.Hmmm, I wonder if the earl truck will come today? That'll be da thoid delifry this wint-ah.

Kevin

[JayInOz]

I worked with a feller- died a year ago- who had one leg a couple of inches longer than the other. He said it was only ever a problem if he tried to walk straight up or straight down a steep hill, so he always went slitherwise