by Kilby

Never use a neologism without looking it up first

Usual John submitted this Curtis as a possible Arlo candidate two years ago, commenting: “It’s interesting that Ray Billingsley managed to get this into print and, given that he isn’t known for testing the limits, maybe it was accidental“. I sincerely doubt that the author was aware of the definition to which John was referring, and the fact that the strip got published almost certainly means that his editor didn’t bother to look it up, either.

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For the [offensive slang] meaning, here is John’s link to “choad” in “Green’s Dictionary of Slang” (warning: extremely NSFW for strong language, of course). For those who just want the meaning, without the coarse citations, Wiktionary also offers a listing for “choad“.

P.S. Besides the indeterminant nature of the Arlo intent, I think another reason why this strip didn’t get posted may be because the gag is sub-standard: the telescoped neologism isn’t really convincing, and there’s no explanation whatsoever as to why both boys suddenly shifted from laughing in the third panel to fighting in the fourth panel.

3 Comments

  1. Unknown's avatar


    In the 1990s X-Men cartoon, the Starjammers showed up. One of them is a big green lizardly guy named Ch’od. I’d always assumed his name rhymed with “odd,” but the cartoon went with “choad” as a pronunciation.

  2. Unknown's avatar

    It appears that there is a Hindi word, “choda”, which is well-established enough to be in slang dictionaries. (See also the character Choda Boy in the movie Orgazmo.) “Choad” is derived from that word and means the same thing, but it is quite possible for someone to be aware of the “choda” form and not the other form, and therefore to use the other form in all innocence. It would be akin to saying that someone or something “sucks” without being aware that when you say “Fred sucks” there is an implied object for the verb and it says something about Fred’s private life.

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