In 1954, Vernon Green of the Medallions wrote a song called "The Letter" in which he used the words "puppetutes of love", a combination of "puppets" and "prostitutes". A puppetute was a woman of your fantasies who would do
anything you wanted. Steve Miller, who sometimes imported words from other songs (including his own) into his lyrics, misheard the word as "pompitous" or "pompatus" and added "pompitous of love" and "pompatus of love" to his songs, "Enter Maurice" and "The Joker", respectively. The words were later used as a title to a movie, "The Pompatus of Love". "Enter Maurice" also uses the words "
sweet words of epismetology" (close to an actual
dictionary word, epistomology), which was probably a misheard version of another Green-invented word, "pizmotality", words so
secret they can only be revealed to a lover.
"My dearest darling,
come closer to Maurice so I can whisper
sweet words of epismetology in your
ear and speak to you of the pompatus (pompitous) of love" (from "Enter Maurice", by Steve Miller)
