Spepash and Other Nonsense

I cracked myself up yesterday.  E-mailing a blog post, I had to fill in the usual “word verification box”, filled with the wavy letters, to make sure that I’m a human and not a spam or a bot (I know, it’s not ‘a’ spam, but I couldn’t resist, as visions of Monty Python’s Spamalot fill my head).

In any event, I have decided to start collecting the random letters the magic word box throws up at me (testing, as often as not, whether I am old rather than whether I am human – who over 50 can read those letters, I ask you?), with the object of creating new words.

And so I give you my first offering from the magic words that aren't words box:

Spepash

Spepash:  the feeling you get when you can’t read those fuzzy, wavy letters, and thus become filled with that sense of failure as a human being that only a machine can invoke.

Spepash

That’s my definition and I’m sticking with it.

I admit, I did play around with some alternatives . . .

What would a ‘spepash’ be? I asked myself.

I’m sure it would be something
amazing
and
interesting

and fun

and just full of
spe
and
pash

spepash

the opposite of balderdash?

Quick as a flash?

a 99.9 yard dash?

Full of panache?

But while such speculations are fun, words have meaning, after all, and in the Beth.Pyles online pocket (yeah, try that!) dictionary 2.0, spepash is machine-created dread.

Use in a sentence:  A wave of spepash crashed over Beth as she sat before her computer, fingers trembling lest she err, and began to tenuously type one by one the barely discernible letters into her security box; the stakes were high -- having failed twice already, she would be locked out forever if she failed this time.

Spepash




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Really, who could make this stuff up?  Check out CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart).  It seems that while I know that I'm a human being, my computer doesn't.