Names of Stuff

Autumn is upon us, which means only one thing: time to put our flip-flops away until next summer.

As I was giving my flip-flops one last victory lap before they entered seasonal retirement, I realized what a silly name "flip-flop" is. It's just the sound of foam against feet in the process of walking. Then I wondered if there were other things that were named according to the sounds they made. "Tap-shoes" immediately came to mind as I was whole footwear mind set. "Pop" or "Soda-pop" does in fact, pop. In "Fall" the leaves do. I'm sure there are others and I encourage you to put them in a comment for all to see.

But the main purpose of this post is to suggest that we change the name of things to fit with the sounds associated with them.

Phones = talkers
pencils = scratchies
keys = jinglers
babies = goo-goos (or criers)
doorbells = ding-dongs
hammers = thuds
cars = vrooms
politicians = blah-blahs
baseball bat = cracker
gun = puut
etc.

You can make up some of your own. You'll find that your writing is much more exciting if you use my new words rather than old, boring, words-that-don't-sound-like-what-they-make-the-sound-of. Let me show you:

A man locked his jinglers in his vroom. He tried to contact his wife on the talker but someone rang the ding-dong and the goo-goo was restless, so she couldn't help. He looked for a cracker to break the keesh (the sound of breaking glass), but all he found was a thud. Suddenly a man across the street pulled out a puut.

See what I mean? Now you try one.