“That’s not a word.” It seems that I am always saying this to my kids, in disapproving tones.

Most often it is because they are mispronouncing something. Then I tell them: we are not entitled to pronounce words incorrectly just because we think it sounds better. This is the argument that my son, with his musical ear, likes to try. The main idea, I reply, is to talk so people understand what you’re telling them.

But what about inventing new words? How about making up words to express things better? This, I suspect, is not a Common-Core approved activity. But how else would our language change and grow?

The great master of neologisms, William Shakespeare, is credited with coining over 1,700 words that have become part of common English usage. We have the Bard to thank for such words as addiction, assassination, and bedroom, grovel, zany and hobnob.

Lewis Carroll gave us, among others, the word “chortle” from a combination of chuckle and snort. And Dr. Seuss gave us “Grinch,” which no longer refers just to the green Christmas-stealing curmudgeon. You could even say that Dickens’ character “Scrooge” (another name now synonymous for a miserly sourpuss) is a “Grinch.”

But what about the rest of us? What new words have you and your family invented? What eccentric phrases have meaning to only you and yours?

Little kids are often the source of new family words. For instance, my daughter and I made up the blended word “Slurk,” a verb combining the words slurp and lurk, to describe the activity of the kitten when she sneaks into the shower to lick up the puddles of water left in the tub.

Another unique word that has stood the test of time in our family is the word “Weeble,” a word my mother used for that piece of wood nailed on a door frame that can be swiveled sideways to keep the door closed. My mother speculated it was a fragment of a German word that was handed down through her family. But interestingly, our door “weeble” has the same rocking motion as the 1970s dolls named “Weebles” that “wobble but don’t fall down.”

“Slervy” is another enduring word—in my mind only. As a teenager I made up “slervy” to describe old, worn black velvet that takes on a reddish tinge. The material’s fibers run every which way creating white creases in the cloth. Today, what I named “slervyvelvet” might be called crushed velvet or “distressed.”

We also have the development of the Internet to thank for a host of new words. Slang words originated on-line such as “selfie” and “twerk” were added to the Oxford Dictionary Online in 2013. According to lexicographer Erin McKean, in her December 2014 TED Talk, one of the most common ways of inventing new words is to shift word function. Thus the word “friend,” once only used as a noun, is now also a verb (as in Facebook’s most obnoxious phrase “friend me”).

The Internet is also full of sites claiming to teach you how to create new words in a few easy steps. But all anyone really needs is their own lively imagination.

Imagine—our neologisms just might catch on and turn up in the dictionary one day.