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I've come across the word in this captchart: "Yo, my nizzle, can you pass me that shvisle?". Is it supposed to mean something?
I've easly found the meaning of nizzle, but I'm at a loss with shvisle. I've found out that the guy on the picture is a rapper called Snoop Dog and that shizzle my nizzle is one of his catchphrases.

Is shvisle a made up word from shizzle, in that case is "Can you pass me that shvisle" supposed to mean anything? And is it supposed to be funny? I'm asking this last question because on that TED talk (7:18) people laugh, are they laughing because of the captchart or because of the speaker's comment : "they contain Snoop Dog" in which there might be a pun I don't understand?

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As I recall, one of the "characters" in the UK's Big Brother reality show was prone to say "shizzle my nizzle" frequently. When pressed, he admitted he had no idea what if anything it actually meant. – FumbleFingers Dec 17 '11 at 14:19

closed as too localized by Mitch, JeffSahol, FumbleFingers, simchona♦, kiamlaluno Dec 18 '11 at 17:14

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2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote
  • the link you gave is to 'art' made out of a CAPTCHA.
  • the CAPTCHA was 'paleontological shvisle'. A common strategy to increase security with CAPTCHAs is to use a random string of letters. That is what 'shvisle' is.
  • The creator of that picture at CAPTCHArt must have gotten a screen shot of the CAPTCHA of those two words, was inspired by the random looking word thinking it would be pronounced like one of Snoop Dogs sayings, and put together a picture of bones, Snoop Dog, and the CAPTCHA.
  • hilarity ensues.
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I never really believed that "shizzle" meant anything. I was almost convinced by entries in Urban Dictionary saying it's a bastardisation of "sure", but OP's captcha link has Yo, my nizzle", which hardly seems compatible. It's just a quirky made-up sound that can mean anything (or nothing) as circumstances demand. – FumbleFingers Dec 17 '11 at 18:41
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@FumbleFingers: For cultural context, if many things Snoop Dog is famous for is the way he talks, or rather the way he played on words, for one short period of his long term celebrity, where he modified words by adding '-izz' or '-izzle' or some variation thereof to the middle of end of a word. So 'for sure my nigga' became 'for shizzle my nizzle'. This way of talking was picked up by many fans, eventually annoying Snoop Dog. Rap/hip-hop, whatever you may think of culturally, is very innovative with language; this one idiosyncratic productive rule just happened to be popularized. – Mitch Dec 17 '11 at 21:04
up vote 3 down vote

Shvisle doesn't occur in:

So it's safe to say it's a made-up word, or more likely, as Mitch answered, a random string of letters.

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