Kleptomanium Originalensis

I'm rather sick, I must say, of individuals who use my funny (or fancy) stuff, and try to pass it off as their own. I mean, I was doing the whole "Sir Something-alot" way before anyone else ever even thought of it, so I felt pretty safe naming my blog Sir Blogsalot and the Blogtones as I did. Turns out there's about 50 billion (numeric hyperbole-MINE!) Sir Blogsalots out there. I'm sick of it, and I may take legal action. Until I've spoken to my lawyer, my blog shall be renamed as above.


Now let's follow the etymology of the word "flodnick", shall we?
In 1982, I saw a fellow from the hospital lab who bore a striking resemblance to Hermy the elvin dentist wannabee. My colleague Alan and I didn't really care for this lab worker's given name Curtis, and we set out to provide a nickname (really more like something to call him behind his back). Having studied neither dentistry nor elvistry, and being as I had not seen "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in several years at that time, I remembered the aforementioned Hermy's name incorrectly as "Kirby". Regardless it worked for our purposes. Now our new little Kirby needed a last name, and "Kidnick" seemed to feel just about right, rolling off the tongue as it did (and does) with alliterative vigor behind Kirby. Thus was our laboratory friend labeled, and thus was the seed of "flodnick" planted...for kidnick became fidnick, and fidnick came to be used as a vocabularian placekeeper of sorts for speakers unable to remember an appropriate word, and yet unwilling to a) pause, or b) think hard enough to remember. "Hand me that fidnick, will ya'?" or "...so we went to the park and we saw 2 fidnicks in the lake."
The challenge was then for the speaker to provide enough contextual or situational clues such that the listener could easily interpret the "real" word. Fidnick became the root for many such words that followed including "fidnicity", "fidnickly", or simply "fid" to name a few. My friend Jack and I once wrote a song called Fidville Matinee.

I cannot be certain when fidnick became flodnick, but I believe it was in the late 1980's or early1990's. Standard etymological evolution, I suppose.

All of this rather boring history is here to serve my point that flodnick continues to serve well in fidnick's place, and has become so well-entrenched in the language of individuals within my own sphere of influence that others (typically rookie overusers) are routinely credited with the word's creation and development.

I've been working on this thing for TWENTY-SIX YEARS!

I may take legal action.

Today's secret link.