Between technology and pop culture slang, our language is changing at a terrifying rate. Remember when a hipster was an old-fashioned type of pants? Now it's a guy who wears them ironically.
That's why we find it so fascinating to go back and understand where the words we use actually come from; we've already told you about slang terms with racist, criminal and perverted histories. Yet somehow, those aren't even the weirdest word origins we've come across. For example ...
#7. "OMG" Was Invented by a 70-Year-Old British Admiral
As you almost certainly know, "OMG" means "Oh my God, I am probably 12." It is most commonly associated with teenage girls who have, by now, probably forgotten that the word "ohemgee" ever stood for something other than simply "ohemgee" (if they were even aware of that in the first place).
Photos.com"Fuck you. OMG LOL J/K ;) But no, seriously, fuck you."
Like "LOL," "WTF" and other similar abbreviations, "OMG" gained widespread use in the last years of the 20th century with the advent of instant messaging -- but it actually goes back much, much farther than that.
But It Came From ...
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first person to use "OMG" was a 75-year-old British admiral, which is about as far as a carbon-based life form can get from a teenage valley girl in a mall texting her friends about Justin Bieber's butt. His name was John Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, and he coined the term while writing his memoirs ... in 1917. Almost 100 years ago.
The exact phrase was: "I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapia -- O.M.G (Oh! My God!) -- Shower it on the Admiralty!" (his subtle way of hinting that he hoped to be knighted). It's ironic, then, that one of the most popular abbreviations in the world was created by someone who didn't quite grasp the concept of using the acronyms to save time, since he immediately followed the term with the phrase it was supposed to shorten.
However, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense that someone in the navy would create something like this: In the days before VHF and single-sideband radio, ships' primary form of communication was Morse code -- a system that, like early texting, required each letter to be painfully spelled out. Navy men were used to abbreviations, and thus likely to come up with some of their own.
GettyThey also invented sexting.
And, since "Oh my God" is an entirely pointless statement, it also makes sense that it wouldn't really catch on among Fisher's peers. Valley girls, on the other hand, are all about pointless statements and uneconomical language (thanks, as we've already pointed out, to Frank Zappa), so this was a natural addition to their lexicon.
As for how they found out about it -- we'd like to think that there had to be at least one teenager in the eighties who was really into obscure documents from early 20th century British naval history.
Photos.comSadly, a bullying accident in 10th grade left him permanently swirlied.
#6. "Crunk" Was Invented by Conan O'Brien
Depending on who you ask, "crunk" means "crazy and drunk" or "high and drunk" -- either way, it means you're too fucked up to spell "drunk" properly. It's also the name of a style of music, a combination of hip hop and electronic dance music specifically designed to confuse white people.
Via Southernspaces.org"Is this ... am I supposed to dance now? Do I eat it? Somebody please help me."
Crunk music jumped into the mainstream in 2003 with Lil' Jon's single "Get Low," but you'll never guess where it showed up before that.
But It Came From ...
In 1993, the word "crunk" was introduced to the world at large in pretty much the whitest place possible: Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
GettyAlso creator of the "masturbating bear" subgenre of death metal.
That's right, Conan was using the word a full decade before "Get Low" and four years before Three 6 Mafia's "Tear Da Club Up '97" (the first notable crunk single). Late Night writer Dino Stamatopoulos came up with "krunk" (as they spelled it) as a swear word that was supposedly so offensive, even the censors were baffled by it. Stamatopoulos says it was supposed to sound like a combination of offensive words without actually being one, allowing Conan and his guests to drop comments about things being "krunked up" and such -- it probably helped that one of those first guests was Ice-T, a man who could make any word sound like an insult.
We're not saying that Conan was definitely the first person in the world to use this particular combination of letters. Apparently back in the 1980s the word was in use in some Atlanta and Seattle nightclubs to mean "full of energy" or "hyped." But it was Conan using the word on national TV that would, just a few short years later, be followed by the mid-'90s emergence of crunk as a music style. So how about we split the difference and say that someone else invented the word, but that it was Conan who popularized it.
As for crunk's "creator" Dino Stamatopoulos: He would eventually gain some notoriety of his own by playing the character Star-Burns in Community.
#5. "Boobies" Used to Refer to Underage Girls
"Boobs" is one of humanity's most perfect words. It's one of those words that immediately conjures a certain shape, perhaps because the letters themselves seem to resemble what they describe:
It's weird to think that the word "boobs" could have ever been used to refer to anything other than breasts (shut up, birds don't count) ... which makes its origin somewhat disturbing.
But It Came From ...
According to some experts, "boob" evolved from the Latin word "puppa" -- meaning "little girl."
Photos.comOne more government watch list and we'll have BINGO!
In fact, "boobies" as a reference to mammaries didn't even appear until the 1930s -- it's earliest known printed use is in the novel Tropic of Cancer (1934), in which Henry Miller single-handedly preconfigured much of modern fiction by writing the sentence "She was lying on the ground with her boobies in her hands."
Getty"Also she had breasts."
Before that, "booby" was primarily used as an insult meaning "stupid or childish person" (possibly derived from the Spanish word "bobo"), a usage that remains to this day among people who have apparently never heard of the other, better boobies.
So how did "boobies" go from something insulting to something awesome? The Online Etymology Dictionary claims that "bubby" under its "little girl" definition could have been used as child-talk for breasts, because children are too stupid to notice that only grown women have them. From there it was only a matter of time before this meaning eclipsed the other one, as slang terms concerning body parts tend to do (just ask anyone named Dick).
GettyEspecially if they also happen to be one.
#4. "Nimrod" and "Maroon" Come from Bugs Bunny
"Nimrod" and "maroon" are the sort of words that you immediately recognize as insults, even though you have no idea what they mean. "Maroon" kinda sounds like "moron," while "nimrod" is most likely a penis reference of some sort. It can also mean "nerd." "Nimrod" may not be the harshest insult ever, but it's definitely one of the most degrading. In Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega calls Tim Roth's character a "fuckin' nimrod," and you can literally feel everyone in the room lose all respect for the guy.
However, it turns out one of these words was actually a compliment ... and the other makes you a little bit racist every time you say it.
GettyYou can actually make quite a bit of money if you do it right.
But It Came From ...
For centuries, "nimrod" used to mean "great hunter": the term is based on the biblical figure of Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah and one of the most powerful kings ever. Some sources even link him to the Tower of Babel -- if someone had a shot at overthrowing God, it was this guy. Nimrod was also a mighty hunter, so much so that his name became a synonym with being good at killing things. So how did that change? Well, it was mainly because of these two:
In a 1940s cartoon, Bugs Bunny calls Elmer Fudd a "nimrod" as a condescending jab, kind of like calling your friend "Einstein" after he stabs himself in the butt or something. This wasn't the first time that "nimrod" was used ironically, but it was such an obscure reference that most people watching probably understood it as another word for "idiot," or someone with a severe speech impediment that turns "R"s into "W"s. "Nimrod" continued being used as an insult by Bugs and Daffy Duck in future cartoons, eventually losing the hunting connection altogether.
As for "maroon," that was just Bugs mispronouncing the word "moron" ... what's shocking there is what it used to mean before these cartoons popularized it as a silly insult. In the 1600s "maroon" was actually a word for fugitive black slaves who settled in the Caribbean and fought twice against the British for their independence. There are people in Jamaica who still identify themselves as Maroons and now have to explain "No, not that kind" all the time. Shame on you, Bugs Bunny, we never knew you were so racist.
0 comments:
Post a Comment