Wednesday Words: My Fabulous Friequaintances

Ever wanted to invent a word?  Have you contemplated an object, concept, or process that doesn’t have an exact word to describe it?

With a teen and tween in my family, we have some rules about social media.  Since what they post is personal stuff, it is a rule in my home that you can only “friend” people who are already your real life friends.  In other words, you have to know them in some way face-to-face before you start telling them where you are, what you’re doing, and what your other friend told you about so-and-so and such-and-such.  Not to mention, posting pictures. 

And that’s pretty much my own rule for my personal Facebook account – which I use to maintain connections with family, friends, high school and college buddies, etc.  But of course, that goes completely out the window when I’m befriending people through Twitter and my author Facebook account. 

So my sons and I were talking about this and how the word “friend” isn’t exact enough because I haven’t met so many of these people.  “Acquaintance” isn’t right either because I really do chat with them and feel some level of friendship.  So we thought we should coin a new word to express a person you don’t actually know but that you friend on a social media account and feel a connection with:  Frieqaintance.  That something in between a friend and an acquaintance, right?  How do you like it?  Too hard to spell, isn’t it? 

I know that for Twitter, the word “tweeps” works well.  But then maybe the Facebook equivalent would be “feeps”?  But then, what about the people I chat with on both, would they be “tfeeps” or “fweeps”?  This is getting way too confusing. 

But I sooooo want to invent a new word! 

So tell me what you think they should be called?  And do you have any words you’ve invented?  Or things, ideas, etc. that need a word to describe them?  Maybe we can help!  After all, I have lots of frequaintances, fweeps, friends, and family!  I wonder what new vocabulary we can think up!