Tonight, I went in search of a word that refers to language that is unique to a family, such as an expression, word or pronunciation that is used in one household but not elsewhere.

I came across several words, including familiolect, familect and ecolect. But my favourite term was family slang, defined by the reference site ThoughtCo as "words and phrases (neologisms) created, used, and generally understood only by the members of a family." Other terms suggested by ThoughtCo were kitchen table lingo, family words, and domestic slang.

I'm planning to collect a list of family slang and the origin of each for my family history book. One that will certainly make it into the book is this one: "Coffee will be coming 'round." My daughter and I regularly use this expression, and variants of it, to talk about the making and serving of coffee in the evening. "Will coffee be coming 'round?" Mel might ask. Or I might announce, upon showing up to her room with a steaming mug, "Coffees have come 'round."

What's the story behind this family slang? It stems from a mondegreen, which as I've previously shared, is "a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning." The expression "Coffee will be coming 'round" goes back to a field trip I was on in 2009 with a group of work colleagues. We were in a large boardroom, and the presenter started his presentation by saying what sounded to me like "Coffee will be coming around." I thought that was amazing since we normally had to get our own coffee from a table at the back of the room or in the hall just outside the room. It took a minute for me to realize that what the presenter had actually said was "Copies will be coming around," referring to paper handouts of his presentation slides.

In writing this post, I came across a thread on Quora (the question and answer site) in response to this question: "Are there any unique expressions that are said frequently in your family that you don't hear often elsewhere? What are they and what do they mean?" I laughed my way through a bunch of entries, but this one had me crying:

We once heard an elderly great aunt proudly telling us of her granddaughter’s graduation from college with a degree in education: "She got some kind of a piece of paper that said how good she was with kids."

Since then, we’ve used that term jokingly about questionable credentials: "Your brother-in-law must be an expert in that field; I hear he has some kind of a piece of paper that says so."

For my husband's birthday one year, my kids and I made a list of expressions Chris coined so that we could read them out at his birthday dinner. It was a lot of fun. I don't have that list anymore, but I'm working on recreating and adding to it.