Cozmfy

No, that isn’t a misspelling

Recently I had an intense conversation with a five and a six-year-old. The conversation went as follows:

Child 1: I think it’s cozy.

Child 2: Or is it comfortable?

Adult with a whimsical sense of humor: “Maybe it can be both. Maybe it can be cozmfy — cozy and comfortable.” And because small children still have a vivid imagination and aren’t constrained by things such as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, cozmfy made perfect sense to them.

But really, why can’t something be cozmfy? And why can’t people make up words? William Shakespeare made up lots of words (420 by at least one person’s account). Wendy wasn’t a name until Peter Pan. Stephen Schwartz definitely made up words to make rhymes work in Wicked. Why can’t the ordinary human being create words? Am I going to write the next Romeo and Juliet? Probably not. (Though you can write to a “Secretary of Juliet” just like they did in the movie Letters to Juliet — they will respond)

But back to cozmfy and why this absolutely should be a legitimate word:

Cozy and comfortable are two very separate things. Cozy is like “sweatpants, hot chocolate, fireplace roaring, Hallmark movie on television.” Most everyone can agree on what cozy entails.

But comfortable? Now that’s a horse of a different color. For example, one of my loved ones is uncomfortable “without her face on” if she meets up with other people. I have always teased her about this statement…