January 29, 2004

• Are you mildly angry? Are you cringing? No, you're igry. Portmanteau word, or could be retconned into one.
• I lean towards a sort of social weltschmertz on this one.
• So what's the difference between igry and cringing, then?
• Igry is how I feel when I watch the opening scenes of Bridget Jones' Diary, and why I never watched the rest.
• I may cringe when I hear anybody say very unique or most unique, but I wouldn't then say that I'm igry.
• I'm going with crigry. I think the idea of "igry" is partially contained within the idea of cringing and needs some overlap. I believe there has to be some history for a new word that is about an old feeling to translate among a range of speakers and listeners. Saying "crigry" starts with a slight decrease in stature as compared to "igry", which is consistant with cringing and shame (crigry or otherwise).
• (Thanks BBF above for helping me clarify my ?) Ok, now we need a word for "an idea that makes you feel vaguely uncomfortable because it isn't a precise match but you aren't sure why it isn't a precise match".
• nitchy?
• Neme? (So nearly a meme, but not quite there yet...)
• mitch?
• Hasselneme? Yes, I'll be excused now.
• I like neme. But, I feel nemetic about it.
• Boy, I sure woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. How is it pronounced? IH-gree? EYE-gree? The definition seems strained. Something somebody else does can "make you feel igry" but yet their action is "igry" as well? Adjectives aren't normally used this way: if somebody else does something 'dumb', it doesn't cause you to 'feel dumb'. There's probably a reason for this and the reason is that if you don't specify the causation of the 'igryness' you can't tell if it's caused by the person feeling it. It would be better to say somebody else's behavior 'is igrying' or 'igryifying' (probably the former) but how on earth do you pronounce them? Then again, my negative reaction to this word may simply be due to the fact that I don't like how it sounds. Too much like 'agree' or 'angry'. And finally, what's wrong with the good old 'embarrassed'/'embarrassing'? Most of the time when used in the same context as 'igry' would be, it implies the exact same meaning. Plus, people know what you mean.
• Oooh! "Igry" is what I often feel when watching "Seinfeld"- which is why I rarely make it through an entire episode- until now, I've simply referred to it as 'a George Costanza moment' (as in, whenever George does something that would, in real life, mortify/horrify/anguish me, like trading sunglasses with the blind man, or whatever. It makes my skin crawl.) "Igry" is perfect. Thanks Wolof, and Languagehat! And I can't watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm" either.
• The adjective describes your feeling; its use to describe another's action refers to that feeling induced. E.g., icky, or the misuse of nauseous as nauseating. I agree that the extension seems strained. I can be embarrassed if I break wind in a public restaurant, or embarrassed for another if they accidentally drop a wineglass, but there's no igry feeling involved there. Igry is much more specific than that. There's a discomfort to igry that may or may not involve embarrassment. Every Lucille Ball comedy that I've ever seen has involved igry.
• Ambrosia: I know what you mean, but I get a thrill out of those moments - it's because they're fake that I can handle them. Although, now that I think about it, Curb Your Enthusiasm makes me igry at times - I scrunch my eyes up at the screen, turn partially away.
• Igry isn't the only reason I can't watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm"- apparently Larry David has a long-lost twin, who looks, talks, and behaves uncannily like him. This person is my boss. I live igry 5 days a week. /derail/
• Stars in Their Eyes. "Tonight Mathew, I'm going to be Elvis Presley in a gold jumpsuit and wig, looking preposterous and singing as if I've had sex when really no woman will look at me because I'm so obsessed with the King that I only eat deep-fried banana sandwiches and hence am the size of a rather well-fed sperm whale."
• Forget 'igry'...Try 'rollin''. My friends and I coined this emotion into the phrase "Rollin'" almost 10 years ago. It came to us after watching the 1995 movie "Clueless", where the super corny song "Rollin' with my Homies" by Coolio, is featured in one of the scenes. Here is how it came about: In the movie, Tai and Cher go to the party in the Valley, and Cher is trying to get homely Tai to hook up with hot Elton. At the house party, they're all dancing in the living room, with Coolio's "Rollin' with my Homies" playing on the stereo. So out of nowhere, a shoe hits Tai on the head, and she falls down, so they take her into the kitchen to make sure she doesn't have a concussion. Cher is telling Elton to "test" Tai to make sure she is okay. Elton asks her a few basic questions, and then devises a clever test by making Tai repeat a part from the song, complete with a corny
• The definition for "igry" sounds like my definition for "squicky" and I like the word "squicky" better. We'll discuss my affinity for "squ" words another time.
• Thanks for the link, Wolof. Something somebody else does can "make you feel igry" but yet their action is "igry" as well? This bothers me too, and I think I'll add a mention of it to my post. Not well thought out. But I like the word (it's IH-gry, by the way), certainly better than "crigry" (which is harder to say); "embarrassed" is much too broad a term for this specific feeling. "Rollin'" isn't going to make sense to anyone who hasn't seen Clueless, and even then you'd have to explain it. And I think it's a damn good flick.
• Kimberly, I thought that squick meant "to disgust," usually with a sexual or scatological connotation., E.g., Jane's graphic description of the fisting scene squicked the entire table. Squalor. Squamous. Squid-squad.
• I would just like to add to this thread that $Country Idol makes me very, very, insanely igry. I can't believe I thought it would be funny.
• Hey, nice to see all the comments on "igry". I posted a response to stripe's comment at Language Hat, and thought I ought to repost it here: ----------------- The "or descriptive of such poor social behavior" part of the igry definition wasn't part of the original definition we came up with. I was merely describing how the word came to be used among my acquaintances. Such is language. After seeing enough people do igry-making things, it just became easier to say "Oh, my god, did you see that igry thing he just did?" Anyway, another word that shows a similar transitiveness of sense is "nauseous" (which has a nice thematic similarity to "igry"; perhaps that similarity is why it was so easy to make the "igry" usage shift), which can mean both "causing nausea" and "affected with nausea". Some people think that the "affected with nausea" sense is incorrect, and that only the word "nauseated" should be used for it, but Merriam-Webster slaps them down: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=nauseous