Random Words : Some examples

The following examples were all made "live," that is, as part of the verbal tennis game on which this blog is based. The categories we illustrate here are based on reflections of what the game means and how it is played, but the examples were thought up "spontaneously;" more on this in a later entry.

Combining, inappropriately, intangible things with tangible ones (note that the inappropriateness is key, appropriate examples would, of course, be "red balloon" or "oblong egg"):

Hypocrisy membrane
Compost imbroglio
Slope betrayal
Correct chop

How can one betray a slope? How can a mindless membrane be a hypocrite? Perhaps the entertainment from these examples is the subliminal effort the brain makes trying to mold a story around how these word combinations might be appropriate.

A favorite category of mine involves the juxtaposition of two nouns (therefore, a combination which can only make sense as a phrase by reading one of them as an adjective), each noun bearing a starkly contrasting connotation:

Sandwich hammer
Fluoride helm
Porridge blade
Germ coordinator

Porridge brings to mind mildness, fairy tales, and grandma's kitchen; blade connotes pain, combat, and blood.

The Science of Random Word Combination.

It's been said that humans have a really shitty capacity for evaluating probablitity. That's why Casinos stay in business. That's why the Lotto exists. That's why every time you run a stop sign in the dead of night, there just happens to be an 18-wheeler present to crush you and your vehicle into oblivion. Because our minds are trained to recognize and disassemble patterns, we also lack the capacity for intentional randomness.

When someone asks you to think of a random word combination, it's often difficult to force your mind into that frame of thinking. You will undoubtedly create a malapropism of some kind, but it's usually in the form of two words that are obviously opposites of one another, but not necessarily random. We're not raised to be irrational, so only those of us who are in fact irrational have it easy when irrationality is called for. The rest of us tend to resort to the crutch of our 5th grade English teachings, which is using anonyms together. Random word? How about Fire Lake. Or Sky Car. Or Police Crime. While seemingly random, they lack a bit of imagination and don't strike us as much as the phrases that tumble out of the random word generators that litter the Internet.

So you ask yourself what it takes to devise random-sounding words. After a number of experiments, we have discovered a few methods that seem to work, and are not necesarily very difficult. The overall idea is to avoid sticking together words that are obviously opposites. The objective is to find words that have no context to each other, or at least require the reader to visualize how the two words could possibly have a context.

For example, one technique is to combine a word with another word whose presence is so insignificant that the reader becomes preoccupied wondering why the insignificant word matters at all.

Another technique is combining a word of intangible nature with something that's tangible. A
state of mind combined with something physical.

Yet another example is finding words or ideas that are generally only associated with something specific, and apply them to something else.

The following posts will demonstrate these techniques.