Last Night I Invented a Word

A German word, no less.



English has no such word, but one of my friends suggested I try German. Unfortunately, not even the complex language of Teutonic Cruelty has such a word -- but German is marvelously modular in that you can put words together like Legos to create complex concepts.

For example, here are just some of the compound words you can create with everyone's favorite little fecal swear:

die Scheiße	([Das ist mir] scheißegal	I don't give a shit
	Scheißding	shitty thing
	scheißfaul	goddamn lazy
	scheißhöflich	obsequious

By the way, the ß in German has a double-S sound, so Scheiße (all Nouns in German are capitalized) is actually pronounced Scheisse.

So I consulted my dictionary and came up with two words that fit how I felt and smashed them together to create a new but utterly proper German word:

Angstfreude

It's a combination of angst, which means fearful anxiety, and freude, which means happiness. Thus, angstfreude means "fearfully happy."

I think it fits how I feel right now:  "Dear Hollywood, I've loved these books for decades. It will be wonderful if you do them properly but I'm almost certain you're going to ruin them."

For those keeping track, this is the third word I've invented. The others are dalqué and mediabation.