Well, she was obviously acopic before we got in the car and then she said she was going to do a birkle but she actually froaked on the way to the party. Diana still managed to look completely bejaguant but Sam was his usual vershilling self. Susan was in such a state, she made a scramlet and the next day she served up muckashooky. Most of the time I was pretty flubbed.

If any of these words sound unfamiliar, don’t reach for the dictionary. You won’t find them in one. They are the made-up kind that families invent. Well, some families, anyway.

There is nothing more peculiar as a microcosm of clannish behaviour and tribalism than a family on holiday. The games they play, the jokes they share. Never more so than in their verbal shorthand, a kind of code, creating a private vocabulary that lexicographers do not record. Made-up words are a special glue that binds each to the other. This can be mystifying for outsiders, who may be baffled by words that elude obvious definition.

Ten years ago, The English Project, a registered charity based in the UK, launched Kitchen Table Lingo as a social initiative. The results that poured in resulted in a book of the same name, recording family slang. Linguists refer to these unique domestic dialects as familects – a blended word that frankly leaves a lot to be desired but demonstrates how many invented words are a blend of two, the everyday version of Brangelina, if you like.

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Others are more obscure in their origin. My father, who prided himself on his command of the English language, which he learned as an eleven-year-old refugee, described occasional bouts of inexplicable melancholy as feeling ‘houdry voudry’. He was unsure of the origin of this slightly foolish-sounding expression but thought he had acquired it while staying with cousins in Hungary during summer holidays. The moment he told me the word, I adopted it enthusiastically. When I explained it to friends, it resonated eloquently as a more exotic substitute for comme ci comme ça, with its similarly see-sawing cadence and meaning. The word has now entered the collective vocabulary of a tight-knit group, its shared use an affirmation of our connection.

There must be something about Hungarian, because actor Sacha Horler’s family use ‘voshlopnee’, taken from what they believe to be the word for face washer. It does sound suitably like a wet flannel. Perhaps this is an under-recognised aspect of how migrant families bring words from the country they left behind to their new home, as verbal mementoes of their origins.

Yiddish has always had a satisfying range of words that sound like what they mean – you hear someone described as a schmuck and you know it’s not a compliment. Music industry executive David Simmonds describes his own dishevelled look as ‘vershilling’, which sounds suitably rumpled, while executive coach Jim Fizdale’s family invented the word ‘shnibble’ for the tasty end cuts of roasted meats. (In an Anglo vein, his brother coined the word ‘magnifinite’ to define a number that must be finite but is unknowably large. Physicist Brian Cox may want to borrow that one.)

According to Susan Butler, editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, most invented family words originate as the mispronunciations of infancy. “Before a certain age, certain words, especially those that start with a cluster of consonants, are hard for a child to get their tongue around. The distortions sound funny to adult ears and are adopted as part of family folklore.”

Other purely invented words created by adults, “often demonstrate that a family have spent prolonged periods of time together. They are proof of playfulness and strong bonds of understanding.”

One of five close-knit and articulate sisters, Margot Ross and her siblings coined the term ‘dolltalk’ for feminine gossip. Together with her three children and Hong Kong-raised husband, she’s made up words with a hint of Asian influence. Like many families, she has forgotten their exact origin. “We say ‘itchi kabana’ when we mean ‘Gosh, I didn’t expect that’.” When she and her youngest daughter spotted an unfamiliar fruit on a visit to Shanghai, they instantly christened it a ‘frimshell’. “We later learned it was called a yangmai berry but we preferred our word, which we felt best expressed its delicacy”, explains Ross.

At family events, my husband’s tribe deploy an impressive array of nicknames, verbal puns and games. It was inevitable that he would come up with some: ‘crowdyhead’ is his word for feeling stressed from overwork; it has stuck, being a perfect expression of a state of mind many will recognise, as well as being named after one of his favourite New South Wales surfing destinations (where, ironically, he is mentally anything but).

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Other members of his family demonstrate their closeness with words passed down through more than three generations. They call currawongs ‘cholikos’, because to some now-forgotten relative, the word seemed to echo the yodelling sound the bird made. My sister-in-law Jan Watts, a retired early childhood expert, coined the term ‘acopic’ to describe a youngster who was having a bit of a meltdown. The word has been applied to every successive toddler born into the family, so much so that some members use it in conversation with outsiders, having forgotten that it does not officially exist. A keen observer of how learning and the imagination combine, Watts is a rich source of such vocabulary, including the word ‘swaddy’ for muddy, soggy, swampy terrain and ‘prinkles’ for staples.

Doting parents and grandparents are often the unofficial custodians and collectors of these words, quoted as markers of development and family folklore. Author Patti Miller remembers her five-year-old son using the verb ‘gunzle’ to mean looking at something longingly (“in his case, it was a cake”) and ‘flubbed’ to mean being bored.

It is more unusual for children to collect the words coined by their parents, but visual artist Louise Lavarack recalls her mother coming up with the adjective ‘bejaguant’ to describe someone looking particularly stunning.

Perhaps because they are in some way taboo, words for bodily functions generate plentiful synonyms. Vomiting, burping, farting: all prompt satisfyingly expressive invention. “In our family, when someone farted, we’d say ‘phonk!’” recalls journalist Maddie Coe, one of three children.

Novelist Charlotte Wood says an infant niece coined the term ‘froak’ for throwing up; like many made-up words, it has a tellingly onomatopoeic ring to it. Similarly Watts remembers a child’s word for a reflux burp as a ‘birkle’, while singer Henrietta Bredin describes the guttural hawking sound cats make before being sick as ‘bokboking’.

Disgust is a rich source of vocabulary. Public health consultant Prof Niki Ellis describes her mother’s dreadful combination of leftover sausages, baked beans and pineapple as ‘muckashooky’ – a word that sounds as if it comes out of a Roald Dahl children’s book.

Families are often so proud of their inventions that they submit them for inclusion in the Macquarie Dictionary, but few are admitted, says Butler. “Huggle is an exception, a favourite with children that gained widespread usage.” Others she likes include ‘charmth’, a quality described by an advertising writer as a combination of charm and warmth, and ‘scramlet’, an egg dish that is neither quite an omelet nor scrambled.

Now it’s your turn.