Satanic net neologisms - nominations invited So popular has our "top net neologism" poll proved that we're now bowing to reader pressure and inviting submissions for the "most repulsive bastard spawn of cyberspace" - words so hideous in their aspect that they cause lovers of the English language to vent steam through both ears while firing up the Twat-O-Tron. Regulars …
Afraid this shows my Stallmanite and Grumpy Old Man credentials.
My blood boils whenever I hear someone bandy the term "Intellectual Property". It's bad enough as a generic term for copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets. But when sitting down and talking to someone is described as "sharing IP" I find myself looking for the nearest bucket.
Whenever I hear this used it takes all my self control to avoid kicking the utterers goolies up into his throat.
FFS, "portal" was a bad enough linguistic pig's ear, but whoever coined that particular bit of pompous asshattery should be burned at the stake. Then cloned. Then burned at the stake again.
U. Like they couldn't be bothered to type "you." Or UR, M8, any of these. Often found lurking in IM and IRC, people like this should have their fingers removed and be forced to type with either their noses or the other useless appendage they usually have dangling limp and floppy from their foreheads.
Can't be bothered to type properly? I really can't be bothered to read your drivel, either.
"Automagically"
Don't know whether this qualifies as a net neologism or whether it's just down to sheer retardedness, but either way it winds me up big style.
A couple of people have scraped the barrel and tried to claim that automagically has a slightly different meaning to automatically, but that's bull. I have never once seen a sentence where if the word "automagically" was replaced with "automatically" the meaning would have been changed.
To me it's like people who say "skellington" instead of "skeleton" or "Westminister" instead of "Westminster".
It's not a new word or a new meaning, they just can't pronounce their fucking words properly.
Grrrr.
As in, a book based on a blog. Sheer crass.
Although had I my druthers, meme being used to refer to anything that is unaccountably popular, viral being applied to any video that has more than ten thousand views on the Utube, and community being used to refer to a small group of vicious loudmouthed sociopaths with internet connections and no jobs would all take a jump.
To those who use...
LULZ, as if LOLS wasn't bad enough.
U, UR or any variation thereof.
ROFLCOPTER, See LULZ.
ZOMFG, See ROFLCOPTER.
The insertion of '1' or 'one' into the already unneccesary streams of exclamation marks. Not big. Not clever.
KTHXBAI, PLZTHX or any other pointless contractions.....!
Boi - Arg!
There are more, but my nose and ears are now both bleeding...
(Paris, because at least she speaks English!)
plix - I do hate that one, I see it a lot, and this from the english speakers in the game I play, yes not just spotted brain-deaden 13yr .... tards play WoW, oh which Blizzard can't even "balance" right.
l33t speak in general and pretty much any word that's a contraction of two other words, you know what I mean by that..
Not sure you can count this one as a neologism, since it predates not only Web 2.0, but also the WWW in general - goes back to 1987 at least.
And I *would* distinguish between automatically and automagically - the latter requires the operation to be in some way technically complex and mysterious - as should be obvious from the roots of the portmanteau word - 'automatic' and 'magic'. Plenty of operations can be carried out automatically but have no 'magic' behind them. Yes, you can always replace uses of 'automagically' with 'automatically', just as you can always replace uses of 'crimson' with 'red'. Doesn't mean it doesn't add more description.
Of course, if it makes you feel better, and if you're up to pronouncing it, you could go with 'autosufficientlyadvancedtechnologyally' instead.
I heave heard a real "squee": We talk of people squealing, but there is no "l" sound in the noise they make. And it was an intensely ear-wracking experience.
"Automagically" is a really old word, in internet time, and carries for me a strong feel that, whatever is being done to achieve the result, nobody really knows how it works. A guy I know worked for Demon in the early days, and once tried to explain to me how the IP addresses were assigned so that, whatever Demon telephone number I used, I always had the same IP address.
And thanks for reviving "kybosh".
Can be very powerful if used in a sarcastic way:
"We have sod-all budget to do this big project"
"OK I'd better dust off the automagic code generator then"
or
"I know we have no historic data but I'd like to generate trends"
"Aha, a job for the automagic data analysis tools"
The shame about this is that, thanks to the nutters at the various dictionaries, today's neologism is tomorrow's entry to try and show how cool Dictionary X is in keeping up with changing language. This isn't changing language, it's just retards who can't speak or write properly, or jargon-felchers trying to be "with it".
Blog - of course. If this has made it into a dictionary, we're doomed.
Blogosphere - for the BBC's "relevant" adoption of this crap word while misguidedly thinking that blogs were going to save us all and that reporting from the "blogosphere" was enlightening. HTMLRectumsphere more like.
Lappy - are you 6? It's a laptop.
Podcasting - it's not "casting" anything. It's an audio download. Nothing new to see here folks. Oh, and for the BBC's shameless advertising of iPods as if they were the only media player ever created, and once again for its adoption of an inane word to try and make themselves seem more with it.
Oh, and the propensity for prefixing any gadget or utility with "i". I what? Mr Jobs, please conjugate the verb to suck, but only go as far as "I" please. Oh, and the BBC (again!), for its shameless adoption of "i" for its iPlayer.
I hadn't thought before just how badly the BBC jumps on the neologism bandwagon. Bloody Bandwagon Copiers.
And while we're at it, how about "FTW"!?!
I use "automagically", but it's always ironic... e.g. so we'll wait for the "automagic" parsing and distribution process to kick in (i.e. the process is complex, and possibly still yet to be written... but it's the sort of thing business people might just assume should happen by itself). Used in kind of a similar tone as "Interweb"
pwn, pwnage, etc ... I do stand "ownage", "0wned" and such because those at least did have some meaning.
"Teh" ... ok, we got the dyslexic joke eons ago, now it sounds lame!
"Web 2.0" ... not only lame, it has been confused between "Mac interface wannabe sites using AJAX" and "Social sites that don't make any money".
"intertubes", though I think we have a certain US senator to blame on that one
"podcast", now any periodical mp3 show is a "podcast"...
"First, Frist, F1r5t" ... no comments
... anything spouted by 4chan (No girlz in the intarnet!)
"Facebook *platform*" or anything Javascript-based announced as an "application platform".
"web operating system" ... thanks for muddying the waters, Google! Now MS have even more arguments to claim they're no longer a monopoly!
Non-net things:
0) "Surge"
1) "Triangulation" of an issue ... or candidate? whatever
2) "Missile Defense"
@15:02 "Automagical" is right out. Used to be in code comments back in my uni days. The Hacker's dictionary says:
---------------
automagically /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ /adv./
Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See magic. "The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically invokes cc(1) to produce an executable."
This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s and probably much earlier. The word `automagic' occurred in advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late 1940s.
---------------
So is "redouble" (in french, "redoubler")
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/redouble
Then you are obviously Retarded and should be tard and feathered.
I have never before heard the phrase `sharing IP´but now I have I despise it and whichever cretin thought it up and first used it, may their dangly bits fester and drop off.
Last is Webinar, it should be removed forcibly from all records and if necessary from any brains that it may be lodged in so0 that it ceases to exist.
Calling people resources, may not be that new, but "Human Resources" still makes me shudder. I am not a resource I am a person. I worked in a company where "Personnel" became HR which everyone referred to as Human Remains. 6 months later they changed back to Personnel.
By the way, I (and my peers) used to draw packet switch networks as clouds back in the 70s, so the cloud is not that new either.
I also hate the -tard suffix. Calling a mentally ill person a retard is disgusting; disguising the bigotry by using a different prefix doesn't make it any better.
There's no such thing as an intranet. That's just an IP LAN. And before anyone argues that 'Intranet' is a handy shortcut for "Internet technologies being used on an internal network," I'd like to pre-emtively counter by insisting that there are also no internet technologies.
In fact, FF's spell checker even objects to intranet. Nice one, FF (although it does also seem to dislike "FF's").
I don't like 'progress' as a verb. Or leverage (why not say "use"?). Or referring to people as resources. Or 'baselining' (for example, with reference to requirements or timescales - this is just total nonsense). These words exist only so that Project Manglers can appear to be doing something.
Solution as in "processed alimentary residue disposal solution" for the loo, "synergistic accoustico-digital globally enabled idea sharing solution" for a phone. Not precisely a neologism though.
"Nearshore". This non-word is hideous and meaningless. Plus it feels like you're chewing on a fat slug when you try and pronounce it.
Slightly less slug-munching-like is the almost equally despisable "nearsourcing".
You came close but I'll take it one step fruther, "internal customer", which is bad enough by itself, but of course the suits feel a need to then add extras, such as satisfaction, experience or any other crack pipe inspired bullshit.
"internal Customer" for those that want to walk away with the feeling they have just had a colonscopy
Hmmm. time to up the doage again I think </rant>
As in, "Everything shall be webified." When I hear someone say that, I can't help but to cringe. So far as I can tell, it doesn't actually mean anything; some jackarse took "web" and added "ified" to make it sound cool. The only detail it's missing is a little two-dot-oh in the middle.
Now, if the phrase were "webamaficated", maybe it would be a different story.
The first and foremost is the overwhelming preponderance of pedants who seem perfectly capable of coherent conversation right up until they stumble over the word "lose", which they invariably spell as "loose". How that turned into a net-wide meme is beyond me, but let's just say it 'reduces your credibility considerably' if you not only can't get it right, but it makes it through the editorial process and into a major print magazine's published pages.... i.e. Microsoft will not "loose" to Apple. etc etc. gag. puke.
get. it. *&^#*^&#$ing. right.
LOOSE = NOT TIGHT. The word you are looking for is LOSE.
The other one that absolutely MUST die is that misspelling of 'owned' aka 'pwned' or worse 'pwnt' -- I've heard perfectly normal humans attempt to pronounce this in conversation and only regretted that the LART was not immediately to hand.
"Webinar" is a good one I'll admit, but it's definitely in third-place compared to these two bottom-grazers.
"M8" or its many relatives(UR...): Instantly marks you out as having the intellect of a labour party researcher - it's no more effort to type the whole thing fucktard
"Web2.0": waffle to make marketing types with goatees sound visionary instead of stupid
"Blogosphere": the adult/media equivalent of telling your kid he's clever because he managed to shit in a potty rather than on your shirt
"social networking": a method of doing nothing known as 'spanner wanking' in the motor trade, another one for the goateed marketing muppets (come the glorious day...etc)
"lappy": somehow contrives to sound like a dog (or goateed marketing type) fucking your leg.
Well as many have said there are too many to accurately add but these two I save a special hatred for:
Anything that has two point fucking zero after it. To be honest though anything that is part of “web 2” is automatically suspect to me. Always makes me think that they have taken an old turd.. pushed it into a vaguely different shape and then spray painted to it to hide the fact that the idea is about 4 years old and stank then too.
Blog, always makes me think of a toilet, and lets face it the content inside most blogs is the same shit contained in a filled crapper too.
If the fucknuts who use lol actually laughed out loud as many times as they claim and at the material which they claim causes them to laugh out loud, then they would be killed. If I had one of those laughing policemen types in earshot I'd make a point of filling their lungs with cavity insulating foam, Rotterdam style.
The shitheads who point out that they just shot a mouthful of liquid at some piece of electronics, and then tell you the brand of liquid and the type of electronics, mountain dew and a brass victorian dildo or whatever, they need a beating too.
Yes! I was reading through the suggestions, and there are some good ones, but none gives the instant revulsion of this word. I think I started hearing it (in the context of "this is the start of a whole new paradigm") around 1993, when a well-meaning book introduced "paradigm shift" to the vocabulary of a swarm of people who went on to abuse it horribly.
This word goes into room 101.
Imagine how much worse it must be if you write "loose" instead of "lose" and have it immortalised on the lyric sheet of a best-selling album. Step forward erstwhile Pink Floyd sticksman Nick Mason...
The most hateful neologism of recent years, though, is "lappy". Anyone using it should immediately be the subject of an experiment to determine the precise temperature at which their face catches fire.
To add to my earlier comment, I agree with almost everyone here. I definitely should have included `social networking´ and I have a particular dislike for the name Skype, I know it is not a neogilism but it sounds to be in the same league as the name Snape a particlarly unpleasant, sneaky and oily individual, perhaps I'm just odd but I don't like it. There are loads of other buzzwords that are not necessarily IT based that irritate, trouch base as mentioned , proactive is one that really makes me want to disembowel people over a slow fire. Too many others to mention really.
pwnage - comes from first per shooters where owned was used alot because stopping to type can mean your death you used to get all sorts of opwned pwn opwen varifations the most common was pwned though and it was sort of semi adopted (personalyy i only ever saw it a few times. but thanks to the migration of people from FPS to WOW it's been adopted be the tits playing that now (not helped by web comics etc using it )
LOL- laugh out loud i understand
ROFL - roll on floor laughing i unstand
ROFLCOPTER - was a helicopter game where everything was made from the word* "ROFL" hate it don't unstand why it's been adopted
LUL - what the F&^K does that mean
!!!!1!one etc - ok i get where it comes from but adding the word one if makes you a fool
M8 - keep text speak for text's are
J00 - means you but it's just stupid
L33t- since leet isn't a word. i guess the mean lite or elite so shouldn't it be 3l1t3 or 3l33t
2.0 - surely really we are on v4 of the internet of V1.3.984 or something for service packs and revisions?
i could go on but i'm bored you can have the rest but let me keep LOL cause otherwise lolcats would make no sense
http://icanhazcheezburger.com (ithink just google lolcats)
*loosest possible use of the term
oh one more cum instead of come purely as i learnt the cum spelling as having a totally different meaning and when my ex used to text me cum over and see me i turned up expecting a totally different night to the one i got.
These mutant abominations are out there and the only thing we can hope is that if we lead by example others may follow.
A suggested transliteration: "social network" -> "sadness network"
"Weblog" might be allowed through but "blogging" -> "I had time on my hands and nothing better to do"
"Mobe" users should report directly to Dr. Tinkle.
Or, in the USA, incentivize. Like gingering a horse.
I also hate 'value for money', because it's inelegant and said when people's brains are turned off.
Webinar and podcast, for sure. I hate webinars, the reality, as well.
'Takeaway'. It used to be 'learnings' and before that 'lessons learned' but that was seen as suggesting some sort of failure or duty or task, so now we have 'takeaways' ('the takeaways from this webinar are...'). God forbid we should use 'lessons' or even 'what we learned was...'.
synergy -- perfectly OK word, but should be used sparingly and correctly.
I'd like to "take these on board" while I think about how to "push IT forward" I may have to "back burner IT" so that I can "juggle the concepts" because I would'nt like to "agranoy" anyone by not being "iTIL Compliant" and i'll have to lookup some of them up on the "WiKi" before I can give them "headspace", and of course I need to play "WoW" for a bit to "nerf" my stress.
IT? Because IT's All Gone Wrong....
'PC' appears to have been a success.
It seems to have really come from those fine, upstanding folk - like Daily Mail readers - who pronounce 'Something must be done!' about whatever pees them off. but when something is done about whatever pees them off they cry that it's restricting civil liberties. (for that read 'I've been stopped in my car and I'm not some dark-skinned chappie or unmarried mother or young man with a Burberry cap. It's PC gone mad". No, it's what you asked for.
anything ending in 'tard'
Don't like Webinar either
cloud (in regards to computing, proper clouds are safe)
epic
fail
epic fail
any l33tspeak
any word with numbers in instead of letters. I make a point of saying it with the numbers in (l33t = "elthreethreetee", cu l8r = "cue elator" and so on)
Please explain the difference the addition of "auto" makes to the perfectly adequate word "magic".
"OK I'd better dust off the automagic code generator then"
"OK I'd better dust off the magic code generator then"
"Aha, a job for the automagic data analysis tools"
"Aha, a job for the magic data analysis tools"
What's wrong with Meatspace? It's Cyberspace that's wank, meatspace is the amusing corollary serving to highlight the wank.
Another vote for blogosphere or lol - the first used exclusively self-referentially by blog writers, the latter by every tit who discovers his first forum at 38 but hasn't yet discovered punctuation. It's an epic battle for my disdain.
I agree with that one as well, strictly speaking it is my job title, but it's just frigging embarrassing describing it as such around proper engineers.
Software is an art really, a massively long way from engineering. The day it becomes mere "engineering" I'll be bored shitless doing it and find something more intellectually demanding.
I was going to recommend some but reading through the comments I'm starting to think this is all just an excuse for old people to complain.
What's wrong with having a bit of fun with language?
I object to stupid meaningless words used seriously by people in suits during meetings (HR, yes; leverage, yes; monetize, yes; reimagining, oh for God's sake) but I don't see anything wrong with FAIL, LOL, teh, pwnage, automagically, fucktard, or any of the other ones that are *jokes*.
Surely this is El Reg's shining glory? The use of terms like "commentard" and "webinar" with tongue placed firmly in cheek? I guess that's what attracts me here every day; it certainly isn't the journalism :p
It is a word only used by people who think the are clever and diffrent to put down anyone who is diffrent to them...
It makes me want to kill the people who use it, especaly as it is often used by people with no imagination, e.g. Mac fans who still think that they are diffrent and in on something.
Eddie Edwards made some good points. Language evolves. Deal with it. Some people will have fun with it in an original way. Other people with less imagination will latch onto the latest "cool" phrases to look clever. This serves as a useful mechanism for identifying dull people, who would otherwise have to wear special hats or something. But practically every word we use sounded funny when it was first introduced.
Try going back and reading the folks from a few hundred years ago complaining about the evolution of the language. It's pretty funny! Practically all the neologisms they complain about either quietly died out or became perfectly ordinary words that no one would object to. One that stuck in my mind (assuming I remember correctly!) is the shortening of "attemptate" to the modern word "attempt." If someone said "attemptate" today they'd sound quite bizarre! The newer form is clearly more efficient, but when it first came out, people screamed about how horribly illiterate it was.
If there weren't new words popping up that were on the edge of respectability, then the language will have stagnated, and I think that that would be a very sad thing.
I thought the silly lass behind the coffee shop cash register was calling me a "Barbie" when she turned away to get my coffee and said "brb" over her shoulder.
More words in favor of "automagic": it conveys both "automatic" (i.e., "you don't have to do anything else to make it happen") and "magic" (i.e., "it's a really complicated process that either you won't understand or I can't be arsed to explain, and either way you're not responsible for knowing how it gets done, only that it is getting done") in one simple word. It is good.
Misspellings that get repeated on purpose (like "teh", "pwn", "loose" instead of "lose") by people who should know better and do not have mobility/ dexterity issues as an excuse are just annoying. Kindly cease and desist unless you WANT the rest of the world to think you're a bit on the dim side.
OK, I'll bite: what is the deal with the '1' in a string of bangs ('!!!')? It looks like the typer lost touch with the shift key while drumming on the '1' and didn't go back to correct it -- is this supposed to be funny? Or to imply that the typer is SO BLOODY EXCITED that s/he just lost all kinds of control? Most of the slang I get (even if it makes me cringe), but this one I don't.
While the '-tard' suffix is getting old, I still really like 'fucktard' and will probably use it longer than I should.
'Webinar', 'blogosphere', 'two- point- oh', 'mobe', 'lappy' -- all good choices.
Actually, I kinda like sheeple.
It's a very descriptive word for idiots who mindlessly go along with (a) crowd.
"It makes me want to kill the people who use it"
Really? You might have serious issues. Seek counseling.
"especaly as it is often used by people with no imagination, e.g. Mac fans who still think that they are diffrent and in on something."
Oh. Never mind, you're just a kid. Don't worry, you'll grow up some day and realize that all tools have a place. Including you.
"Definately." While not, strictly speaking, a net neologism, the web has allowed this abomination to proliferate to the point where it is beginning to show up in spelling checkers. What is this world coming to? Google gives 21.5 MILLION instances of it on the web.
BTW, the only rule I have manually added to my Spamassassin web filter is to add three spam points to any email message that contains the word "webinar." My users have yet to complain.
<about to show his age>
Hate to tell you this, but "automagically" was in the hacker's linguo (and that's the *original* meaning of "hacker", not the media's perversion of the term) back in the 80s. There is a big difference between automatically (it happens without human intervention) and automagically (not only does it happen without human intervention, but the method by which it happens can only be understood through Black Magic or Deep Voodoo).
And yes, "Black Magic" and "Deep Voodoo" are also hacker terms from the same period. Look 'em up.
lose lose.
Hey! I *like* that one.
Just substitute the more widely known meaning of the verb "to rim" when you hear this one. I find it's usually well-used in context (certainly works for both the examples you quoted) and brightens my day. (WARNING: Some of the mental imagery induced may not be suitable for those of a delicate disposition.)
If it really pisses you off, try laughing quietly to yourself and then asking the user to look up "rimming" on the internet when asked what's so funny. That'll kill it off quickly for you.
I can't believe no-one's yet mentioned "low hanging fruit", meaning easy stuff. I was compelled to write it down when I first heard it (many, many times) in a presentation from some marketing tart.
My latest verbal irritant is the politicians' current favourite (or "mot de jour", if you will): "in the round".
Paris because she's an easy bit of stuff.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
