pericombobulation

pericombobulation

English

Etymology

Blend of peri- +‎ discombobulation. From a 1987 episode of the British television comedy Blackadder, in which Dr. Samuel Johnson boasts about his newly completed dictionary containing every word in the English language. Blackadder subsequently uses a number of newly-invented words to perplex him: "I'm anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation."

Noun

pericombobulation (countable and uncountable, plural pericombobulations)

1. (humorous) Disturbance and confusion.
   • 1997, "[e-mail]", Why People World-Wide Hate Americans. (on newsgroup aus.flame)

     Because we have cultured, Euro accents and enunciate properly, we try and slip made up words into our meetings and watch the USers eat them up because like the saying about the bigger the lie, the more people believe it, the more syllables a word has the more readily they will accept it.
     Example: "We have identified an anuspeptic, some would say phrasmotic, phased paradigm shift in the market of interphrastic proportions. It's causing much contrafribbilarities^[sic] and indeed much pericombobulation in the ABC1 sector. Frankly, we're Donald Ducked."

   • 2000, "Steven Megson", [I] Book Review (on newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett)

     Oh come now, I for one am quite phrasmotic for the pericombobulation Paul has suffered, and can only wish that in future he will have the sense to complete his assignments more interphrastically.

   • 2005, "Geoff Lane", Re: Welcome to Hell (on newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery)

     I hope this is not causing the poster any pericombobulations.

Further reading

• Blackadder the Third, epi. 2, "Ink and Incapability"
• Reviewer's Choice on Blackadder the Third