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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?

3 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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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  3. 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

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