If you don’t know what an onomatopoeia is (On – O – Matt – A – Pee – Ah), I shall first take this opportunity to educate you.

It is not an Italian rug urinating ceremony (yeah – that’s gonna you take some time to decipher but trust me, it’s worth it if you’re plastered and say it quick) – anyway, it is in fact a word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the source of the sound that it describes.

There are shit loads of them out there and due to having a sub-zero social life, I’ve taken the liberty of Wikipedia-ing it for you for reference, and the top ten include ‘cuckoo’, ‘hiccup’, ’cough’ and so on and so forth – it’s a word that sounds like what it is – so we’re on the same page, right? You now know what one is and you’re going to haphazardly throw this syllable-raping monstrosity into a conversation at some point this week to pretend you’ve a higher IQ than is accurate (my favourite game), anyway…I found a better one whilst wandering around Pennies this afternoon and we’re all going to waste an extraordinary amount of time reading about it:

Knickers.

Knickers is the ninja word of the onomatopoeia world. Sneaky little bastard that has hidden its eerie phonetic similarity for years under a veil of forced embarrassment and shame (biggup Catholicism). Now, not only am I baffled at how this earth-shattering realisation took 34 years to occur, but after spending precisely 19 minutes in the lingerie section of Primark’s aptly named slave-shop employer – I’m also baffled at…well, just knickers, in general.

I shall explain.

I am pretty fit. That’s a lie actually, I’m a completely cracking perfect 10…but I’m also monumentally lazy half of the time (which has resulted in a teenage lad working at a newsagents down the road actually thinking I’m two different women, depending on whether I’ve been motivated enough to shave my legs and put makeup on – but listen, the stories involving that poor ginger twat need an entire blog of their own so I won’t mention him….yet). Anyway, I have a great body; I keep in shape in between binge-drinking, starve in between cake/pizza abuse and have been known to perform 3 sit-ups immediately after a 4 minute treadmill session that was slow enough for me to answer a text message whilst stationary.

Introduce knickers – and keep in mind what I said about phonetic imitation – knickers sound like what they are…they don’t sound silky and gorgeous and comfortable, do they? No, they sound like sharp little masochistic motherfuckers – and today I was greeted with the panti-equivilent of Ming the Merciless.

Cast your eyes upon these bastards.

Ladies and gentlemen, Joseph Goebbels is alive and well and designing knickers for Primark – you heard it here first on Hamburgers N’ Heroin; your number one source for thought-provoking, conspiracy-exposing journalism.

Now, before you start – I am not a believer in sensible underwear, the collaboration of those two words makes me feel menopausal; I think lingerie should be gorgeous and lacy and sexy and naughty. Massive flesh coloured arse-trappers are as hideous to me as they are to the unfortunate fellas they are exposed to and Bridget Jones needs a boot in the face in my opinion. But these bastard string atrocities in Pennies have me on the ropes (cue the justification for opening the wine at 3 in the afternoon).

Forgive me, but I quite like the idea of using a good looking fella to remove my knickers – not a magnifying glass and a fucking craft knife. This garment would disappear if I put it on, it would just cease to be – Victoria’s Secret would be kept until death because you’d never weld me out of the fucking thing…so I have come to a decision…

…I will never wear knickers again.

(whoa…keep reading – this genuinely isn’t going to be half as exciting as you think)

I now wear…Shlinkays – the new and improved onomatopoeia for girls’ pants.

Yeah, that’s right – you heard me. I did it people. I just bitch-slapped knickers and made a new word. If I was American, aside from being massively overweight and incapable of spelling the word ‘colour’ correctly, I would be punching the air and screaming “You – Ess – Aaay” right now, whilst turning purple and randomly shooting a legalised firearm.

Shlinkays are the new knickers – and its official because I did “Add to Dictionary” on my Microsoft Word spell-check which means that patronising wiggly red line doesn’t appear under it anymore – surely just as good as being entered into the Oxford Dictionary?

So now, go forth children and replace as required, remembering that the word “Knickers” may still be used but only when visually accurate – examples of appropriate usage can be found below…

…and hey, you’re welcome.

Examples of appropriate “Knickers” and “Shlinkays” Usage:

“The Lord Jasus, your arse looks great in those Shlinkays…”

“God help me, she was wearing Knickers that could have advertised a reduced meat sale in Tesco…”