“Well, my pappy became a breeder way back in ’35,” says Earl Jr. “Times were so bad our vocabulary plumb couldn’t handle it, and there was a real ruckus for new words.”

The late Earl Sr.’s breeding ranch, the Wonky M, soon became the stud farm of choice for new words. “We’d take a word in after it was coined and match it up with another nice word, or sometimes just a darn good suffix. Nowadays we use them computer, but nothing else has changed much.”

At the ranch, one pen holds the word “exorcism” and another the trademark “Mucinex,” recently put out to stud. Their offspring, “Mucinexorcism,” trots around gaily. “We think that one’s gonna catch on, if we can get round the legal issues,” says Earl Jr.

In a nearby pen is “brellow,” kept separate from its parents, “brown” and “yellow.” “Now, this one didn’t work out quite so well,” says Earl Jr. “When you’re a breeder, sometimes you jut gotta accept that not every word is a ‘spork’ or ‘Brexit’ in waiting.”

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