vomitrocious

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Wed Jul 16 03:43:40 UTC 2008


On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 11:15 PM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> I remember this word from Delia Ephron's book _How to Eat Like a
> Child_, published in 1979 with illustrations by Edward Koren (in
> fact, IIRC, the word appeared in an illustration). I can't find my
> copy of the book just at the moment, however.

Ah, of course. (It came out in 1978, actually.) Via Amazon's Search
Inside The Book, here's the text from p. 30:

----
How to Express an Opinion
Yucky
Gross
Dis-gusting
Ugh
Sick
Sickening
Scuzzy
Smell-y
Oh, barf
Creepy
Icky
Obnoxious
Boy, is this dumb
Creeps
Crummy
Vomitrocious
----

I think that book was influential for a lot of kids growing up in the
late '70s and early '80s.


--Ben Zimmer

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