On Monday evening (August 24, 2009), we brought Jules shopping at Parkway Parade and he told me he would like to buy a toy boat.
Jules: “Mommy, can I buy a toy boat?”
Me: “What do want the boat for?”
Jules: “So that I can play with it and swiddle it around.”
Me: “Oh … what is swiddle??!”
Jules: “Swiddle is a ‘boat’ word. You know, move it around on the water?”
Me: “You mean, so that you can play with it and navigate the boat on the water?”
Jules: Yeeesss! So that I can navigate and swiddle it around!
I tried googling for the definition of ‘swiddle’ and found that no such word exists, except in the form of surnames. Jules has always been fascinated by words and I guess he has just invented his first word, for us in the family at least! Who knows? We may have a linguist among us.
For the record, if swiddle really makes it into the dictionary, it would probably look something like this:
swiddle
verb
[swiddling, swiddled]
1. Travel on water, moving back and forth or sideways
2. To move across the surface of water, especially by means of a sailing vessel
2 comments:
this is such a delightful growing-up" experience!
and what a cool word!
definitely a linguist in the making!
thanks for sharing!
cheers!
I'm in my early 20s, and "swiddle" has been a word used by family members as far back as my grandmother (according to my mother's recollection).
We usually use it like "swish" or "swirl," but sort of more vigorous or erratic. I often use it in a cooking or food context, like when "swiddling" bread in leftover sauce, or other food activities involving liquid.
I stumbled across your blog post when I googled swiddle, because my mom was curious whether it had an etymology outside our family. I guess this warrants more investigation!
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