While reading the New York Times Magazine this weekend, I chuckled at a small section entitled, “That Should be a Word.” This week’s made up word was, “buychology.” As expected, the definition of the made up word, “the science of making people make purchases."

While reading, I unexpectedly thought of my mother. Whenever my brother, sister, and I would do something that my mother thought was stupid, she would call us a “yuck-a-puck.” She used the word so often--I guess my brother, sister, and I did a lot of stupid things--that I thought it was a real word. I only learned it was a made up word after using it in a paper for school. When I came home that day and told my mother what I had learned, her response was predictable; she called me a “yuck-a-puck.”

My children know exactly what the word “yuck-a-puck” means as they had the same propensity to do stupid things as I did. I used the word often.

Do you use made-up words?