Verbalslighting

The online and social media equivalent of gaslighting—making someone doubt their own memory, perception, or sanity through carefully crafted verbal manipulation, but without the romantic relationship context. Verbalslighting happens when you clearly remember someone saying something, but they've deleted it and now claim they never said it. It's when you screenshot a tweet, and the person responds that the screenshot must be fake. It's when someone in a group chat rewrites history so confidently that you start questioning whether you're the one misremembering. Verbalslighting thrives in digital spaces where evidence can be deleted, edited, or denied, leaving victims alone with their screenshots and their doubt. The only defense is archiving everything, which is exhausting, but necessary when dealing with someone who treats reality as a suggestion.

Example: "She posted a screenshot of his offensive comment. He immediately verbalslighted her, claiming the screenshot was doctored, that he'd never said that, that she was clearly unstable for fabricating evidence. Twenty other people had seen the original comment, but he'd deleted it and now they were all being gaslit into wondering if they'd imagined it. The screenshot remained. The doubt remained. The verbalslighting worked."

Verbalslighting by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 15, 2026

Verbalterrupting

The gender-neutral art of cutting someone off mid-sentence, not because you have something urgent to add, but because you simply cannot wait to be the one talking. Unlike manterrupting, which specifically targets women, verbalterrupting is an equal-opportunity annoyance—men do it to men, women do it to women, everyone does it to everyone, and nobody finishes a thought anymore. It's the conversational equivalent of cutting in line, except the line is someone's train of thought and now it's derailed forever. Verbalterrupting is especially common in meetings, where the person who interrupts the most is somehow seen as the leader, and in family dinners, where interrupting is just called "how we communicate."

Example: "I was three words into telling my boss about my project when she verbalterrupted me to share her own ideas about what I was going to say. She was wrong about what I was going to say, but she never found out, because I never got to say it. The project suffered. The meeting continued. The verbalterrupting never stopped."

Verbalterrupting by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 15, 2026

Verbalspreading

The verbal equivalent of manspreading—taking up more than your fair share of conversational space, leaving no room for others to contribute, and making everyone else squeeze into the margins of the discussion. Verbalspreading happens when one person dominates the conversation, interrupts anyone who tries to get a word in, and treats the dialogue as a monologue that others are privileged to witness. Unlike manspreading, which is about physical space on public transport, verbalspreading is about auditory space in any setting—meetings, parties, family gatherings, online forums. The verbalspreader's voice fills every available gap, leaving others to communicate through glances, sighs, and the desperate hope that they'll eventually need to breathe.

Example: "The team meeting was supposed to be a brainstorming session, but Dave was verbalspreading so hard that no one else could get a word in. He talked for 45 minutes straight, covering his ideas, his opinions, his weekend, and his thoughts on the office coffee machine. By the end, everyone else had mentally checked out, and Dave thought it was the most productive meeting ever. It was not."

Verbalspreading by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 15, 2026

Verbosify

to expand on a dexcription, or to use more adjectives. making a piece of writing more descriptive

"That sentence needs to be verbosified, add an adjective after this word" or "you need to verbosify that paragraph"

Verbosify by EliteEloise March 5, 2026

web verbing 

Is the use of the name of webpages as verbs.

person1: i can't find any music from this band
person2: you can always YOUTUBE them


i was web verbing today i said "the wonders of googleing"

web verbing by elnegropipe January 13, 2009

sesquipedalia verba 

Literally, "words a foot and a half long". Unnecessarily long words.

The term "Sesquipedalia verba" is a great example of sesquipedalia verba.

sesquipedalia verba by wyokk December 29, 2015

non-verbal visit 

Where you go to hang out with someone, but they have a super-long phone call from a super-important person, and so they are unable to end the conversation and give their undivided attention to you. If you know the person well enough and are therefore fairly familiar/comfy with their assorted business/family/personal matters, however, this situation can sometimes not be all that bad a thing, since speaking and acting involve two separate and unrelated parts of the brain and are therefore completely different thought-processes, and so you and your friend can still hold hands, cuddle, exchange massages, relax in bed, and even have sex, all while the person is still maintaining his unbroken listening and yackety-yacking into the handset (it helps if he wears a little earpiece/boom-mike headset-attachment that plugs into the phone, since that way he does not have to clutch the phone to his ear with his shoulder, and so he can have both hands/arms completely free to give you whatever physical attention that you two wish to engage in during the visit.

Non-verbal visits can sometimes be almost as enjoyable as hanging out and holding a conversation, plus when you are ready to take off again, you do not actually have to interrupt the person's phone-conversation to verbally speak your farewell; you can just smilingly offer him your hand, and he can then smile/nod affably back at you and companionably pump your hand while he still talks on the phone with his caller, and so in this instance he will consider your "alternative" farewell-gesture to be just as satisfactory as if you'd actually said goodbye in the "usual" way.

non-verbal visit by QuacksO October 2, 2017