By Emily Clark.
A “dictionary of disgusting new words” is amusing children, stoking their interest in language and seeking to answer the tough questions like: what do you call it when you are learning to count and get stuck on a number?
Well, you’d be countstipated.
Melbourne comedy duo Matt Kelly and Richard Higgins have launched Ickypedia — the dictionary of all things gross for people who are small.
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“The book is one long list of newly invented disgusting words,” Kelly says.
“These are words that we think … kids need in their lives. They’re very valuable words.”
Kelly and Higgins perform live shows for “kidults” – not missing the opportunity to amalgamate – and say fictional phrases from Ickypedia like “grosstastic”, “nacholepsy”, “udderpants” often amuse both their young audience members and the accompanying parents.
“We like to make the parents and kids laugh at the same thing,” he says.
“There [are] some ideas in the book that are a little bit more complicated and we like the idea of the kids asking their parents what they mean.
“Like Vlad the Inhaler who’s a person in history who steals peoples asthma puffers.”
Like his eight-year-old self, Kelly says the kids’ favourites are always words about “poos and farts”.
“We are first and foremost aiming to make the kids laugh,” he says.
“I like origami harmi — when you cut yourself doing origami, or a paper cut.”
He also points out that chewing on aluminium foil is actually zinklegritting, the “goop that gets caught in the plughole” after washing dishes is congealies, and that “if amazetastic exists than grosstastic exists”.
