Joom - A secret race of beings living in the Hebredian mountain range.  They can often be seen prancing around the upper-most part of the mountains, just below the snow line.  Often bodies of Jooms can be seen in the snow. They are remarkably capable of handling the cold, yet their feet are completely unadapted to the terrain.

Their feet consist of three small pads with four claws. This could be related to a dog's paw, yet a Joom's foot is a lot more dexterous for the terrain it has adapted to survive in. The rest of its body is similar to a goat's, however the front legs are smaller than the hind legs. This allows it better grip were it to fall off a cliff, which happens a lot more often than you'd expect. Scientists believe that the shorter front legs may be the downfall.

A lot is unknown about the Jooms, as scientists are rather unwilling to explore the Hebredians for further investigation. The hostile terrain has allowed them to survive, and they are known to come up to hill climbers with no sense of aprehension.

The Joom's numbers are completely unknown, and as such an endangered warning has been put in place to protect them until further information is learned about these creatures.

Scott Johnston, a scientist part of a team who are going to study the Jooms says that "It could be the hill-climbers are making it up, or we could have a whole ecosystem up there we never knew about. This is going to be fascinating."

The team will come back in a week, hopefully with some new information about these creatures.

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Author guidance for This story

It stands for Dictionary of Made Up Words. Make sure you put it in the title.

I went into Microsoft Word (am I allowed to say that?) and wrote one word - Joom. I started imagining what the heck a Joom is, and I got to writing a big article about Jooms.

So the point of this is, make up a word. Then define it. Expand until satisfactory.

It can be any word you like, as long as you made it up. If you heard it in a show or film, or read it in a book, then it doesn't count.

Therefore kijiomangiokastiophobia is a word for this dictionary (as long as you can define it), but supercalifragilisticexpialidocious isn't.

updated Oct 30 '10 by Aceronian