For those who don't know this about me: I'm a journalist.
Like most journos, I've spent time working in newsrooms. Nowhere teaches you to swear better than a newsroom. I became a prolific pro-swearer in my 20s – if there's a better compound swear word user than me, I've never met them.
But at the age of 30, something weird happened to me. I had a baby. That wasn't the weird thing (well, not the weirdest, at any rate). No – the weirdest thing was that overnight, I acquired a completely new vocabulary. I found myself using words that no sane adult uses in regular conversation.
To reassure myself that I'm not alone, I've invented Mummy Lingo Bingo – a brand new game where we identify how many of these random words we only use around our children. Like I used to say "dirty" but now I find myself using the word "mucky" on a daily basis. Seriously? Who says mucky??
How many of these words or phrases have you used this week? Bonus points awarded if you score a complete dozen.
- "Goodness me!" (I'm sure I used to have a ruder version of that)
- "Beddy-byes"
- "Shoot."
- "Jim-Jams" (oh, the shame)
- "And what do you say?"
- "Lovely manners"
- "Good try!"
- "Eat up!" (c'mon – have you EVER said that to anyone over 5?")
- "toes-ies"
- "shift your bottom"
- "scootch up"
- "We don't do that, do we?"
I'll say this though – if you ever catch me using the phrase "nicky-noo-nahs" instead of "knickers" (that beauty comes courtesy of my sister-in-law) then you have my permission to shoot me. I have some standards, after all.
