Have you ever wondered where words come from?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary there are generally around three thousand new words added to the English language each year. Have you ever stopped to wonder where on earth they come from? Who designs and manufactures them? Where is the word factory? Whilst engaged in festive preparations recently I've had plenty of opportunity to let my mind wander, and I think I may have come up with the answer to this important question. The mine from which most of these new words are hewed is none other than our old friend the Captcha Word Verification system.

Just think about it. You decide to leave comments on a fellow-bloggers' page, carefully compose a paragraph of almost Shakespearian quality and then it is lost to posterity because you type in "brutlok" instead of "brutlik" and are locked out. How many of those verification words have you ever seen before? Precisely. None. They are fresh off the production line. Captcha has reached an agreement with the powers that be whereby it gets these new words for word verification purposes before they are officially allocated meanings and sent out into general circulation.

Armed with this flash of inspiration, I have invented a new party game - indeed, a new meme (and if ever there was a word graduating from the Captcha Word Verification factory it is "meme"). The next three times you visit a site which uses word verification, make a note of the word. Then invent a meaning for the word and show its use in a sample sentence. Here is my entry based on word verifications I have encountered recently.

1. slyma: a small dribble of saliva (often secreted from the corner of the mouth)
"Robinson Grimshaw threw off his heavy coat and wiped the slyma from his grizzled chin"

2. kersim: a minute part of a larger object (mainly used in relation to food)
"Whilst in the past Amanda would settle down for the evening with a large pie, she now contents herself with just a kersim of pastry"

3. deriesse: the final statement in a long and contracted argument
"With a look of fury Roger spat out a perfect deriesse as he walked out of the door"

Play along if you want but I am afraid you will not find any word verifications on my blog to use. You will need to go somewhere else. With that deriesse, I will leave you.