Word Sandwich

Word Sandwich? What’s that? I want one!



Um...that is definitely a word sandwich (a bookwich!), but not the kind I'm blogging about today. My word sandwich is a bit different. And I thought I’d go with five year old Jack’s definition—straight from Emma Donoghue’s Room (PS—awesome read!!!)




“Huge.”
“Enormous,” says Ma.
“Hugeormous.” That’s word sandwich when we squish two together.


“Scared is what you’re feeling,” says Ma, “but brave is what you’re doing.”
“Huh?”
“Scaredybrave.”
“Scave.”

Word sandwiches always make her laugh but I wasn’t being funny.



Word sandwiches. I make them all the time. They’re fun to create. They’re fun to say. I say things like gihugic and hideosity and my kids tell me how much they love my words and call me things like their "wowsome teacher mom.” They think I’m some fabulous goddess of word origins. And I’m their math teacher.

Of course, word sandwiches have their place in a classroom. Or times you shouldn’t say things, especially around sixteen year old boys. My students were studying transformations (aka moving graphs around – reflections, scaling,…) Andsowell, I charged my students with creating their own pictures on the graph and then experimenting with transformations – one drew a music note, another a robot. They flipped them over the y-axis, rotated them 270 degrees. It was one of those “I feel like a good teacher” days. And then another picture caught my eye. Kinda hard to miss considering it was falling off the chart graph paper as he drew it. I couldn’t help but exclaim

That’s ginormous!

And his friend immediately chimed in with

That’s what she said.

Yeah…I laughed. What else was I going to do?

But just like anything, you want to use word sandwiches in moderation. Not go all spazballs with them like I do on my blog. Ha. Much more powerful when used sparingly.

And they're EASY. I mean, look at the word fabulous. That word could be sandwiched with so many others. Fantabulous. Fabulosity. Fabulicious.

Okay, so sometimes they’re not that great. Or completely vomit worthy. Like peanut butter and pickles. But when they’re good, they're really good.

Like mint cream oreo cookie good.

So try it. Take two words. Smush ‘em together. I think I might try a totally epic word sandwich. Like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious epic. Hmmmm.

Word sandwiches. Fun to say. Fun to create. And mucho easy-peasy.

Got any word sandwiches on YOUR plate?

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