Monday, August 19, 2013

Introducing the Frypo

If, like the grumbler, you greatly enjoy the practice of social intercourse - by which I'm not referring to any form of group sex, that'd be a different post - you will have undoubtedly heard if not actually committed one or two freudian slips.

These happen when your subconscious intrudes on an otherwise public exchange, and typically people refer to them when the end result is sexual innuendo.  My favourite kind, obviously.

And, if you get as many emails as I do, you'll see a few in print.  I've decided a spot of neologism is in order, and thus coined the word "Frypo" - a freudian typo. What makes these even more fun is the permanent and pervasive nature of an email, combined with the speed at which we all like to knock one out (See what I mean?).

Sometimes, these errors result in a word which is arguably even more appropriate than the intended one.  Consider the following, sent by a most excellent friend of mine to a large group of people today in response to a situation which might possible be described colloquially as "a fuck-up".

>>   XXX is manually copulating a number of failures...

I laughed out loud.  It didn't get any better when I visualised the lady concerned biting her knuckles when she realised what she'd sent, and when I re-read it and focussed on the preceding "manually" I dissolved again.  And I had to dedicate a little of my lunch break to writing this...

Now I realise that I may be increasing her embarrassment by writing about it, but I'm not going to out her by naming names here. That would (in another classic example of the frypo from another friend of mine) only exasturbate[1] the situation.

And I also realise that "making fun" of this might lower me (if thats possible) in some folks opinions but, as I once pointed out - to my mixed horror and amusement - to a group of senior managers, there's no accunting for taste...





[1]  To make something worse, on one's own...

3 comments:

rod said...

I confess I'm having trouble understanding what your friend meant to write: contemplating?

It does remind me of a holiday job I had at Marconi while a student, and my lead had asked me to write an octal calculator for the project (give the student something to keep him out of mischief for a little while).

So I wrote it, and gave it the name 'octcount'. At least I meant to, but I do have a tendency to transpose letters when typing too fast, so the name was briefly... closer to octopussy, one might say.

I have no idea if it was Freudian or not.

Unknown said...

That has SO happened to me!

Unknown said...

That has SO happened to me!