Pop Culture Will Eat Itself » Language http://popculturewilleatitself.com Indie music, movies, tv, games, toys, nostalgia, and more from pop culture junkies Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:15:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 en Word of the Day: Keming http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2008/word-of-the-day-keming/ http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2008/word-of-the-day-keming/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:41:53 +0000 Sean http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2008/word-of-the-day-keming/ Keming - the result of improper kerning
I know, I’m a big dork, but I think this is hilarious. Don’t get it? This might help.

From the twisted genius David Friedman at Ironic Sans

]]> http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2008/word-of-the-day-keming/feed/ And the Word of the Year is… http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2007/and-the-word-of-the-year-is/ http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2007/and-the-word-of-the-year-is/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:44:24 +0000 Sean http://popculturewilleatitself.com/language/2007/12/12/and-the-word-of-the-year-is/ w00t is Webster’s Word of the Year
Merriam-Webster has named it’s Word of the Year for 2007, and the winner is “w00t!”. If you’re not a gamer or interweb geek you may be thinking “What the hell is w00t!?” It’s a general-purpose interjection expressing joy or excitement, usually used when smiting one’s enemies or scoring cool stuff. Note that the two middle letters are zeroes, because the word stems from L33t, the hacker spelling system.

There are a bunch of theories about the origin of “w00t!”, but they all center around online gaming. The two most plausible are:

  • It’s an acronym for “we owned other team”, originating in online games like Counter Strike
  • It’s RPG shorthand for “wow, loot!”

I think “w00t!” is a great word, but I’m a little dissapointed. I would have voted for “pwned”…

via BoingBoing

]]> http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2007/and-the-word-of-the-year-is/feed/ Long Live the Interjection! Yay! http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2007/long-live-the-interjection-yay/ http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2007/long-live-the-interjection-yay/#comments Wed, 21 Feb 2007 01:00:41 +0000 Sean http://popculturewilleatitself.com/language/2007/02/20/long-live-the-interjection-yay/ Interjections!I can’t believe I’ve made it 144 posts without going all grammar-geek on y’all, but the times they are a changin’. Slate has a good article about how the internet is giving credibility to the redheaded-stepchild of grammar: the interjection!. If you’re not sure what an interjection! is, check out the Wikipedia entry, or listen to this School House Rock explanation:

Interjections

(From Eddie From Ohio’s “School House Rock Medley”, live at Bad Habits 12/15/1998)


The article’s most salient point is that “Interjections are suitable for online writing…because of the way online writing mimics speech.” Yay! He got it exactly right! Interjections like “ha”, and “meh” are perfect in tone for the internet, where tone is otherwise difficult to get across. How many times have you written a sarcastic IM or email to someone only to have them take it seriously? But something like “That movie was great, ha ha” is nearly impossible to mis-interpret.

In addition to clarifying tone, interjections are great for expressing a lot of emotion with very few words. For example, the answer to the question “What did you think of the movie?” could be expressed with “Well, I thought it was ok, but nothing special”, or more briefly, and equally evocatively, with “Meh”. There’s an elegance to it, isn’t there?

So up with interjections, the clarity and spice of the grammar world. Hooray!

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