(The Holiday spoiler below) Not that you care.

I've been saying "besties" since my womb days. Then twenty four years later, on Dec 16th, 2006 a word of the day email featured the newly validated-as-a-real-word "besties," which if you're not one of my besties you probably don't know what it means, so here's the urban dictionary definition:

Short for "best friends".

Me and Jill are [totes] besties.

Then, in no small coincidence, the next day I perchanced to go see The Holiday with SarahGo, a cherished bestie, and a really pretty one at that. As a disclaimer I must say we ONLY saw the movie because my Grandma said there was a surprise ending. We were betting that one of the couples ended up single; and from there it was pretty simple to deduce that the fat chick, i.e. Kate Winslet, would be the one who dies with cats. But apparently Grandma had a working definition of surprise that included the real scenario of the movie: all the characters get together with their respective romantic interests in a Different City than from where they originally lived. Whoa.....surprise.

Anyhow, I'm veering. During one of the movie's many date scenes between Jack Black and Kate Winslet, the two are in a video store and Black is doing his funny guy schtick picking up movie titles and singing the theme songs to them in a way that makes one torn between wanting to immediately bone him or punch him in crotch screaming 'Get over yourself!' At one point he picks up The Graduate, does a little beatbox version of Mrs. Robinson, and then puts the movie back on the shelf and says:

"No seriously though. This movie is totally brill."

(Had I been the screenwriter it would have read "Seriously though- this moves is totes brill.")

SarahGo and I both immediately and figuratively wet ourselves. How did Hollywood get a hold of our language? Are we just chimps in a cage, being studied and sold to? The answer is yes, but that's not so important. What is important is that abbrevs are finally beginning to be recognized for the concise and energy-conserving language tools that they are.

And so, with no further ado, I present a starter list of functional abbrevs for your everyday life that even Al Gore would be proud of:

Abbrevs, or Abbrevsies-- as in what I'm writing about.
Lush--as in "what a lush dress"; or Luscious, the restaurant that my housies subsists on.
Housies--affectionate term for living partners (singular or plural)
Totes-- as in "She's totes cute."
Amaze-- used as an adjective in "Dude that old lady was amaze in that moves."
Moves-- those good ole Hollywood concoctions
The Boyf-- as in the guy you sleep with regularly
The Girlf-- as in the girl you sleep with regularly
Din-- as in your last meal of the day
Boobsies-- an affectionate title; as in "Dear Boobsies."
Vagsies-- an extremely affectionate title, one step up from boobsies
Skins-- the tight jeans that are currently trendy
Logsies-- the logical reasoning section of the Lsat (maybe not so day-to-day useful)



Of course this is just a beginner's list that one should slowly incorporate into one's daily vocabulary. I myself have become such a master that I spontaneously invent language as I speak. Givesies became short for Thanksgiving and elicited a lot of "Whaaaaat?" responses. The most infamous abbrevs occurred at work one day when I wanted to go downstairs to the dumpling bar and buy their specialty dessert, prompting me to shout to SarahGo in front of mingling coworkers: " I need to get a chocolate dumps now!"


Perhaps these abbrevs will make you seem a smidgen less intelligent than you are. But might I remind you, besties, their ignorance is your power.