Strong Bad's (Mis)use of English

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Although Strong Bad is quite obsessive about everyone's grammar and punctuation, he still makes some of the same mistakes himself. Everything from missing punctuation marks to made-up words to the occasional blatant spelling error grace the pages of his emails.

Strong Bad's Mistakes

  • some kinda robot - In his very first email, Strong Bad misspells "before you go to bed" as "before you got to bed."
  • i love you - Fhqwhgads is misspelled as Fhqwgads, missing the h in between w and g. This is ironic because Strong Bad later complains about people misspelling it in emails.
  • i she be - Strong Bad types the phrase "all i gotta say..." The i isn't capitalized.
  • duck pond - Strong Bad misspells unfortunately as unfortunatley.
  • band names - A space is added before, rather than after, a comma in this email: "the easiest way is to ,you know..."
  • dullard - Strong Bad incorrectly uses the one-word adjective everyday instead of the two-word adverb every day.
  • techno - Strong Bad uses the possessive form of its instead of it's in the statement, "well, its not really my style." He later lionizes Dan D. in local news for the same mistake.
  • dragon - After demonstrating how to draw Trogdor, Strong Bad says, "Let's see how the other students are doing." However, when he types it, he omits the word see.
  • the show - Not only does Strong Bad miss a question mark in this email ("And what's with that flying mushroom he's always advertizing for."), he also neglects to capitalize The Cheat's name (as the cheat), and later the The in The Cheat's name.
  • funny - Strong Bad misspells the filename of his email client, strongbad_email.exe, at the beginning of the email as stongbad_email.exe, though this may be a reference to being called "Stong Bad" in 50 emails.
  • the process - After stating that he makes fun of people's poor grammar and spelling, Strong Bad promptly misspells the word occasionally as occassionally.
  • monument - After explaining that he was distracted by the Thnikkaman, Strong Bad omits a period: "So you can see why I got distracted".
  • pom pom - Strong Bad makes a spelling error in his letter to "General and Fraulein Pom Pom." Fräulein should be written with the umlaut over the "a" as shown. It is also politically incorrect to use Fräulein in modern Germany, but the term used to mean "young woman." He is wrong to use it in either case and should have used Frau instead. Strong Bad is obviously not fluent in German.
  • pizzaz - Of the accepted spellings of this email's title, none are used in this email. Correct spellings include pizazz and pizzazz. Strong Bad not only misses this, he even adopts the misspelling throughout in a very uncharacteristic move.
  • time capsule - Strong Bad types "your hot single Mom" at one point. In this situation, after the posessive "your," mom doesn't need to be capitalized.
  • part-time job - Strong Bad misses a question mark at the beginning; "What do you mean do I do anything else besides checking e-mails."
  • origins - Curiously, Strong Bad misspells curiosity as curiousity.
  • rampage - Strong Bad stresses the importance of the "M.L.A. handbook." However, the actual MLA doesn't use periods in its abbreviation.
  • garage sale - Continuing his bad grammar on moms everywhere, Strong Bad types "the only joke Moms have." Moms shouldn't be capitalized in this instance.
  • bottom 10 - Though it is spelled properly in the bottom 10 list, the word chocolate appears as chocloate on Strong Bad's monitor at the end of the email.
  • portrait - Strong Bad misplaces a period. "Guess what? Nobody calls you Coolio da Fabio (aka quit making up nicknames for yourself.)" The period should be outside the parentheses, but Strong Bad puts it inside.
  • secret identity - When Strong Bad asks "have you ever seen The Poopsmith and I...", it should be "The Poopsmith and me".
  • pop-up - Strong Bad types "four year-old." As an adjective for the implied noun "child," it should be written "four-year-old."

Strong Bad's Made-up Words and Phrases

  • guitar - Strong Bad refers to trembalos, which is a mangling of tremolo, a rapid repetition of the same note, or an alternation between two or more notes.
  • dragon - Strong Bad invents burninator, burninate, and burninating in order to describe his dragon, Trogdor.
  • crazy cartoon - Strong Bad uses the contraction I'ma, a combination of I'm and gonna which is a hip-hop slang term. Coach Z later says this in flashback.
  • suntan - Strong Bad says that the "Ab-Abber" can make him a thousandaire... or, at least, a hundredaire. He also creates the phrase All up ons. Hundredaire is also used in part-time job.
  • local news - Strong Mad's subtitle, written on an index card, reads "Sportscarster Strong Mad." Strong Bad seems to be the culprit of this misspelling because (A) he threw together the news broadcast and (B) it's his handwriting, as seen in dragon.
  • kind of cool - Strong Bad uses the word anyways, an unnecessary plural of anyway.
  • lackey - Three words coalesce into one in this email: Some the times becomes somethetimes.
  • monument - Strong Bad refers to the Stop Sign as having "all the rightness of a foot without all the footdom of a right."
  • car - Using a figure of speech called tmesis, Strong Bad inserts dang into the word anyway to make anydangway.
  • lunch special - Strong Bad changes the email "someone" sent to him to end with "Keep on tranglin".
  • haircut - Barbzerdry, a portmanteau of barber and wizardry
  • theme park - In describing the mascots for Strong Bad's Mount RidesPlace USA, Strong Bad turns a noun into a verb: antic-ing.
  • time capsule - Strong Bad creates the word coolty to describe something the people of the future definitely won't doubt about him.
  • animal - The deep sea fanglyfish is another new invention of Strong Bad's, both literally and physically.
  • part-time job - Strong Bad refers to himself as a hundredaire socialite. ("Hundredaire" was repeated from suntan.)
  • secret recipes - In order to cover up the fact that Strong Bad has a recipe for cooking The Cheat, he invents the countries/cities of Bumdumbourge and Totalslava. The Cheat, as evidenced by his later reading choices, doesn't buy it.
  • best thing - Strong Bad claims to be doing rrll rrll well in this email. This apparantly has the same meaning as real real well, just with no vowels and twice the consonants akin to grrl.
  • do over - The return of anydangway, a word Strong Bad used in car.
  • modeling - Strong Bad wants to advertise a product called Colognac (pronnounced Coe-lone-yak). This is a combination of cologne, or men's fragrance, and cognac, a type of distilled liquor.
  • bedtime story - The words dadbysitter, grodalated and gewd are coined in this email.
  • portrait - Onwardly, possibly an adverb form of onward.
  • highschool - Strong Bad greets Patrick, the sender of the email, with cowichewa.
  • death metal - The words extracurriculariffic and geographist are coined in this email. (The correct word for geographist is geographer.)
  • technology - Strong Bad refers to Pom Pom's Tellular Cellaphone in this email.
  • pop-up - Strong Bad refers to a tab on his "fleshtangle". He also mentions cornuco-pourri, probably a portmanteau of cornucopia and potpourri.

See Also

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