English

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Etymology

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Coined 1993 by Trey Parker in film Cannibal! The Musical as a nonsense word.[1] Later used in episode “The Gift” (May 22, 2001) of TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Joss Whedon, thence popularized by fans.

Interjection

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shpadoinkle

  1. (slang, US) An exclamation meaning "great" or denoting surprise.
    • 2007. James M. Stillwell. Stand Strong Crew: A Super Tale:
      "Holy Shpadoinkle Danny, you killed like, everything in town."

References

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  1. ^
    TONY: What’s shpadoinkle mean?
    TP: The truth is, a lot of the time when I write songs, I’ll make up some stupid word to fill a gap, knowing how many syllables it needs to be, and when we record it, we’ll replace it with a real word. I did this song for Cannibal!, and I knew it needed to be “It’s a ‘something’ day”, and it had to be three syllables. We recorded it that way ’cause I couldn't think of something, and everyone thought it was great. So I decided, we should just have people say it all the time. People in the movie say it out of happiness, out of sadness, out of anger – it’s a completely meaningless word.
    Time Out New York, 1998, archived at “shpadoinkle