snunkoople

alexz commented on the word snunkoople

made a typo ..

Atlantic article on why Dr. Seuss'ian words are funny. http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/11/the-secret-sauce-behind-dr-seusss-made-up-words/417405/

November 24, 2015

ChrisFWestbury commented on the word snunkoople

I coined this term, or rather my computer did, so I know the etymology. It was created by a computer program called 'LINGUA' (The Language Independent Neighbourhood Generator of the University of Alberta; http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~westburylab/downloads/lingua.download.html). LINGUA made the nonword using a statistical process called a Markov chain, which makes nonwords by mimicking the statistical structure of a language, in this case English. I originally made it to use in a task called 'Lexical Decision', which asks subjects to decide if a string of letters is a real word or a nonword. 'Snunkoople' was the string that inspired my colleagues and me to conduct some research into why some nonwords are funny:

Westbury, C., Shaoul, C., Moroschan, G., & Ramscar, M. (2016) Telling the world’s least-funny jokes: On the quantification of humor as entropy. Journal of Memory & Language, 86, 141-156.

I am trying to get 'snunkoople' accepted as an English noun, meaning 'a nonword that sounds funny', as in the sentence "'Finglam' is a snunkoople."

December 2, 2015

bilby commented on the word snunkoople

Vaguely rhymes with Mott the Hoople.

December 2, 2015

ruzuzu commented on the word snunkoople

"A group of researchers at the University of Alberta have developed what may be the first mathematical theory of humor, all thanks to a funny-sounding nonsense word: snunkoople.

Psychology professor Chris Westbury was studying people with aphasia, a disorder affecting language comprehension, when he noticed something strange. Subjects were asked to read strings of letters and identify whether they were real words. After a while, Westbury noticed subjects seemed to laugh at certain nonsense words—snunkoople in particular."

-- http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71851/researchers-have-developed-mathematical-method-identifying-certain-kinds-humor

December 2, 2015

qms commented on the word snunkoople

I think (but really I'm guessing)
That Westbury, C., is expressing
His hope that this group'll
Embrace his snunkoople
And give it Wordnikian blessing.

He needn't have worried his head
But asserted his new word instead.
In Wordnik submission
Amounts to permission.
We use it if once it's been said.

December 3, 2015

bilby commented on the word snunkoople

Reminds me of cellar door in that I have a visceral negative reaction to any word about which my innate response has been ssecond-guessed by some obscure linguistic computation.

December 3, 2015

bilby commented on the word snunkoople

Did you say ssecond bilby?

December 3, 2015

bilby commented on the word snunkoople

Sshutup you ssand-hopping twitchbag.

December 3, 2015