On 17 Aug 2002, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: #"Baralier" <baralier at optusnet.com.au> writes: # #> As long as you're only using the word and not practicing it : #> http://www.mich.com/~pnsnv/othershit/squick.html # #People don't practice it, pretty much by definition -- since the #general use is to describe practices they *strongly* don't want to #engage in. For anyone reading this thread who may take that URL's text seriously: to the people I've learned "squick" from -- people who use the word, as distinguished from people who say, "Oh, here's a fun word, what can I do with it?" -- it means something like "to be a strong turn-off to (a person), to upset or disgust (someone)": 1."That squicks me, please stop doing/ describing it." 2.<knock, knock> "Who's at the door? Are they bothered by nudity?" "Oh, it's Mark. He's OK. Mark?" "Nudity doesn't squick me." "It doesn't squick him." <open door> "Come on in." 3."The stuff at that URL *really* squicked me, and no, what it says isn't 'squick' really means." And I have no trouble at all believing that there are people who get a kick out of describing something that they think will make the other person turn green and say "Oh, ICK!", or worse. And some of them, alas, have somehow gotten past fourth grade. And to do that is to practice squicking, in the sense I have described, which I think is the only sense in which the word is used for real. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel