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"New" Words From the Geek Culture

Posted by kdawson on from the bonny-earl-of-murray dept.

thatskinnyguy sends news of Merriam-Webster's 2008 list of new words and, to no-one's surprise, a good number of them come out of geek culture: words like webinar, malware, netroots, pretexting, and fanboy are now official words according to M-W. The CNet article pulls out one "new" word for special appreciation — mondegreen — and, while the article gets the origin right, it ends with a lame call for readers to send in their favorite mondegreens. (CNet does have the good grace to link the Kiss This Guy site.) SFGate columnist Jon Carroll has been collecting readers' mondegreens since 1995 and his list is bound to be better. Quoting Carroll, in a prophetic mode: "This space has been for some years the chief publicity agent for mondegreens. The Oxford English Dictionary has not yet seen the light, but it will, it will." Would you believe, Merriam-Webster's?

19 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Is it wrong... by ickoonite · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...that I don't know what almost all these words mean? What is a "webinar" for example? I guess I'm just not cool anymore... :|

    1. Re:Is it wrong... by Brain+Damaged+Bogan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "web seminar" it's not a geek term at all, but a marketing one. my old boss used to love these damn things and every time he'd say the word "webinar" a peice of me died a little inside

      --
      -- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
    2. Re:Is it wrong... by MrNemesis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Primarily because, in my experience, most users of the word "pro-active" are unaware of it's anti-reactive connotations and use it to describe singularly reactive situations ("I want us to respond to this pro-actively"), or even in just syntax-ruining "I've learnt a cool new word" non-sequiturs ("our new rubber grommets have a 100% pro-active paradigm"). In other words, I'm convinced that alot of people use it because they think it sounds More Important than "active" or lack the vocabulary to better describe it.

      It's kinda acceptable in most sysadmin circles as most geeks are aware of things like "pro-active" support (I prefer to call it preventative maintenance myself since it means less fuzzyness for the recipient, which we abbreviate to premaint in conversation) but neologisms are mostly a matter of taste. /spot the word-snob ;)

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    3. Re:Is it wrong... by owlnation · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, I don't think webinar's geek word... it sounds disturbingly like a... BUZZWORD!

      Disown it!

      And seriously, what does mondegreen have to do with geek either -- nor is it in any way a new word. This seems like a another sockpuppet article designed to generate traffic for a website.

    4. Re:Is it wrong... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In other words, I'm convinced that alot of people use it

      The Guide to Alot
      a lot many Steph had a lot of apples.
      allot to divide They alloted 2 apples per person
      alot no meaning I found alot of errors in there post!

    5. Re:Is it wrong... by ad0n · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's like listening to a police officer giving testimony in court (and trying to sound more intelligent).

      "I proceeded to approach the accused. Afterwhich, I proceeded to question the individual and ..... "

      What ever happened to good, clean use of language?

    6. Re:Is it wrong... by g0at · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For a self-described "word snob" I'm surprised you bungled "its" ("it's") and "a lot" ("alot"). :)

      --
      myselfmusic
    7. Re:Is it wrong... by bkr1_2k · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For reference, it's shudder that you're looking for, not shutter, which is what is put over a window during a storm.

      --
      "Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
  2. New word coined on Arstechnica a week ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Witness the birth of a new geek word on Arstechnica forum:

    pludge
    verb
    1 [ intrans. ] to install an operating system update before verifying that it's safe to do so on the [Ars Mac forum]

    http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/953002313931

    The thread is now the third link on Google if you search for the word.

  3. For shame by consonant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I realize being a language Nazi is nerdy, even by Slashdot standards, but this summary is just shockingly awful!

    The headline reads "\"New\" Words From The Geek Culture". So the summary starts off with a single line on it, then randomly rambles on about CNet focusing on 'mondegreens'. Bzzt! Summary-headline mismatch already! Now it's possible that kdawson is just mimicking TFA, which does the same, but that's a frcikin' blog post! Somehow, a rambling blog post has been distilled into (if it's possible) a fumbly summary as well!

    All this meandering is topped off with a quite inexplicable question: "Would you believe, Merriam-Webster's?"

    Seriously, WTF?

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    1. Re:For shame by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Coherence and originality as so Web 1.0. The Web 2.0 way is to get a bunch of uncredited articles and make a 'mashup' of them.

      Mind you, Mondegreen is a cool invention
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  4. Re:meh, Webster's by StrawberryFrog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I gave up on Webster's as an authoritative source on the English language after they added bling to its dictionary.

    Why shouldn't a dictionary have that word? People are going to use it, and other people are going to want to know what it means. A dictionary would be failing them by not including it.

    --

    My Karma: ran over your Dogma
    StrawberryFrog

  5. in one day, out the next by petes_PoV · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I wonder how much "staying power" some of these words will have. OK they've been around in specialised usages for some years, in an industry that's famous for making up new words. However, until they make the leap from being geek words to being words your mother would use I will still be sceptical that they haven't been properly accepted.

    This smacks of the dictionary trying to be overly trendy - I expect a lot of these will be quietly dropped from this dictionary in years to come.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  6. Re:meh, Webster's by ya+really · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In my honest opinion, I think Webster's adds buzz words like these mostly knowing it will give them free advertisement when the media lets everyone know what pop culture words are now somewhat legit. Dictionaries dont really need to add nonsense words that tend to be slang or are too silly to ever be used outside of a joke (looking at you webinar). For words like these, there's always urbandictionary.com. After all, wikipedia may have an article on Jenna Jameson, but Britannica does not.

  7. All perfectly cromulent words by bazorg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    now all we need is to add "cromulent" to the dictionary.

  8. Re:meh, Webster's by digitig · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But how many times have you used mouse potato since 1993?

    Isn't that exactly why it should be in a dictionary? Somebody reading something from the early 1990s might come across it and want to check their understanding of the meaning. If I'm reading old literature I'm rather glad that my dictionary includes "sweven" and "parfay" precisely because I don't normally use those words.

    --
    Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  9. Re:meh, Webster's by digitig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I gave up on Webster's as an authoritative source on the English language after they added bling to its dictionary.

    What do you mean by "authoritative"? Do you think that the purpose of a dictionary is to tell you how the language should be used or to report how it actually is used? Most dictionary compilers see themselves as having the latter role, in which case "bling" certainly deserves a place.

    --
    Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  10. Old news by xalorous · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think it's too late. Already common use and even listed in some dictionaries.

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/google

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/google (lists 5 references to google)

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    TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
  11. Oxford English by DanJ_UK · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "The Oxford English Dictionary has not yet seen the light, but it will, it will." Oh but it won't.

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    - Dan