Weddingbee Blog

“Anyone can speak Troll. All you have to do is point and grunt.”

—Fred Weasley, from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Mr. Potion and I…we kind of have our own language. And I don’t mean that we’ve studied linguistics and developed our own method of communication, complete with alphabet and grammatical rules and such. Nope, that was J.R.R. Tolkien, not us.

But we do have a whole bunch of words sprinkled throughout our everyday conversation that mean absolutely nothing to anybody else and something very specific to us—and this is outside of memespeak/internet language. I realized the full extent of this the other day when I got off the phone with Mr. Potion at work and was met with the confused stares of my coworkers.

And so, hive, I’m going to give you a crash course in how to speak Potion!

Image via Meme Generator

berries (beh – rees) (n.) 1. The act of making fart noises by pressing one’s mouth against another person’s skin; 2. see also: a “raspberry”

ex. “If you give me berries again, I’m going to punch you in the face.”

Mr. Potion likes to tickle me because it makes me squeal loudly and flail about violently. I, on the other hand, don’t particularly enjoy it—hence the squealing and the flailing. He also occasionally likes to blow raspberries on my arm. Or stomach. Or cheek. Ew. Once, I was talking about what we should have for dessert after dinner, and I had a pint of strawberries in my fridge.

“Ooh—I want some berries!”

Big mistake.

“You want some berries, huh?”

And then the fart noises began. I have to be sure to avoid the word “berries” in conversation now, because it doesn’t mean fruit.

Image via That Miserable Bastard

boodergad (boo – dur – gad) (adj.) (n.) (v.) (adv.) Ambiguous curse word; could be used as any part of speech; often preceded by the word das

ex. “Urgh, this stupid freaking boodergad wireless router…”

Sooooo sometimes I talk too fast, and when I do, I screw up my words. Heh. For some reason, Mr. Potion was singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and he got the lyrics wrong—he said “He knows if you’ve been good or bad.” So I rushed in to correct him—my favorite thing to do—only I tripped over my words, so what I said was, “No, it’s bood or gad—I mean. Urgh!” Once Mr. Potion was able to breathe properly after a healthy fit of laughter, he commented that it sounded like something an angry German guy might shout: “DAS BOODERGAD!” So now, if we find ourselves in a stressful situation and want to avoid cursing, this is one of the sillier words we throw out there instead of an actual expletive.

Image via Univeristy of St. Thomas

face (fayss) (adj.) (n.) (v.) (adv.) f*ck

ex. “We’re never going to beat this level of Super Mario Bros. Wii! Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!”

This one started at the camp where we met. Cursing was against the rules, so Mr. Potion started the trend of using the word “face” in place of the F-word. Of course, this just led to us inventing circumstances to “curse” as often as possible. “Aw, face!” could be heard during much of our preparations for the various engineering challenges during the week. To be honest, we don’t use this one very often any more, but if either one of us sends a text with only the word FACE, we know they’re having a bad day.

Image via Quaker Oats

Gorilla Bars (gore – ih – luh bahrs) (n.) Quaker brand chewy granola bars

ex. “I’m running late, so I’ll have a Gorilla Bar for breakfast.”

Kids say the darnedest things, and this is one of them. When Mr. Potion was little, he misinterpreted his mom when she referred to these snacks as granola bars; he heard the word “gorilla” instead of “granola” and called them that until he learned how to read. The moment I heard this story, I thought it was the cutest thing EVER and have called these tasty treats Gorilla Bars (it’s a proper brand name, y’all) ever since.

Image via News Blaze

IHOPs (eye – hops) (n.) IHOP

ex. “After church on Sunday, let’s have IHOPs for breakfast!”

I have no idea why we pluralized the name of this restaurant, but we did. We never say “Let’s go to IHOP”; we say “Let’s eat IHOPs,” as if that’s the proper term for food one eats at an IHOP. We’re weird, in case you can’t tell.

Image via Apparel News

Project Runaway (prah – jekt ruhn – uh – way) (n.) Project Runway

ex. “Can I call you back? I’m watching Project Runaway.”

I love me some Heidi Klum. I got a sewing machine for my birthday last year and have used it for lots of small household projects, along with some Christmas presents, but so far the only clothing I’ve sewn was for my cousin’s Barbie. I do love to fantasize that one day I’ll be making my own super-chic clothes, and I love to live vicariously through the contestants on Project Runway and admire the immense creativity and insane amount of work required for that competition. And so, of course, if Mr. Potion is over at my place when I’m watching it, he has to sit down with me and watch. And after a couple of seasons of this forced viewing…he’s become a (reluctant) fan of the show! It got to the point where, last season, he actually knew the names of the three finalists, could identify the designer by their work, and agreed with me that Anya is SO overrated. (“I mean, she’s hot, but all those models are wearing the same thing—a sheet that barely covers their boobs.”) Still, in an effort to preserve his Man Card, he feels the need to tease me when I talk about the show, so he calls it Project Runaway…but the joke’s on him, because I call it that now, too!

Photo by Food Freak / Image via 23

spood (spood) (n.) 1. food you eat with a spoon; 2. food

ex. “I just got off work—what should I have for spood?”

This one was actually Mr. Potion. I don’t remember the exact context, but the words “spoon” and “food” were coming out of his mouth at the same time and this is what happened. Originally, we defined “spood” to mean food you eat with a spoon, but it has since evolved into meaning just food in general. We often use it in place of the word “eat”; you don’t say “What do I want to eat?” you say “What do I want for spood?”

Image via Better Business Bureau

T&A Special (tee and ay spe – shull) (n.) An order at IHOP for an appetizer serving of mozzarella sticks and a short stack of pancakes.

ex. “I think I’m going to order a T&A Special!”

So first of all, this isn’t as dirty as it sounds—these are our initials. One time, we were at IHOP for dinner, and I was torn between what I wanted to eat. I wanted something fried and dinner-y, but then again we were at IHOP—I wanted some pancakes. Mr. Potion suggested I just go ahead and get both—so I did! Mozzarella sticks for an appetizer, a short stack of pancakes for the main course—and he did the same. AND IT WAS AWESOME. It has since become our go-to meal at IHOP, so we’ve nicknamed it the T&A Special—because the caveat is that we’re only allowed to order it if we’re together.

Image via Wikipedia

Taco Hell (tah – koh hehl) (n.) Taco Bell

ex. “Let’s go get hungover food at Taco Hell.”

This is all Mr. Potion. I’m pretty sure it originated from the fact that sometimes, when one eats Taco Bell, one regrets it almost immediately.

Image via Wikipedia

two-shoe (too – shoo) (v.) to urinate

ex. “I have to two-shoe; I drank too much wine.”

This one is really weird, but here we go. The majority of our relationship prior to getting engaged was long distance; after we met at camp, we were pen pals who spoke on the phone about once a month for three years, and then we officially dated from a distance for three years. This means that almost the entirety of our relationship occurred over the phone; we got very good at our communication skills. In the very beginning, we would spend hours—sometimes entire Saturdays—on the phone, talking about everything and nothing, never wanting to hang up. This was especially weird for Mr. Potion, who has always been rather introverted and never enjoyed talking on the phone with anyone. In fact, we’d be on the phone so long that if one or the other of us needed to use the bathroom, we’d just leave the phone for a few moments and then come back and continue. Only, as I’m a girl, I take a bit longer in the bathroom than he does, and one time he figured this might be too long to wait on a dead line.

He then proceeded to try to convince me to stay on the phone while I went to the bathroom. He pulled the “if you love me you’ll do it” line, which didn’t work. He tried bribing me with pretty things, which didn’t work. He told me he’d buy me a pair of shoes, which didn’t work.

“I’ll buy you TWO pairs of shoes!”

“…two pairs of shoes?”

“TWO PAIRS OF SHOES!”

So I continued our phone conversation while I went to the bathroom. It is the single weirdest thing I’ve ever done with a boyfriend in my entire life. We refer to it as the Two Shoe Challenge, and after that we’d say, “It’s time for a Two Shoe Challenge!” if either of us needed to excuse ourselves to the bathroom; this evolved into just the word two-shoe.

(For the record, I didn’t get the shoes. Instead, he bought me the Halloween costume I’d been eying when I said I didn’t want to spend money on a costume. Not the same as two pairs of shoes, but still totally worth it.)

Do you and your spouse have your own language? Do you have any inside jokes that pepper your everyday conversation?