ABSTRACT
Nonsense words have no clear or predefined meaning, although they often carry
a certain sense insofar as they can obey the rules of grammar and syntax. So
although we might not know what ‘smatterised’ means we can work out from
the -ed ending that it is a past tense verb, while the association with the word
‘smattering’ (a slight knowledge of, e.g. a language) suggests something made
less, perhaps messily given the resonance with the word ‘splatter’. So perhaps to
be smatterised means to be reduced messily to a state of little understanding? If
that makes sense . . .
