Internet Slang

Posted by Tom Joad on May 18, 2009 | 3 comments

Now, I’m a bit of a nerd and also a geek (I’m told there is a discernable difference). As such, I spend a lot of time hanging around in the corners of the internet where the spelling and grammar employed would be sufficient to make one’s eyes bleed. In these online dens of linguistic depravity, however, I am very much at home. As much as I love words and their etymology, I accept that often, slang is the de facto language, and English a very close second.

Far from being horrified by this, I have come to love the colourful, weird and often overtly obscene language employed by my fellow nerds (or L337 H4X0RZ if you prefer). I have a feeling that documenting even some of this is going to be a long job, so look out for part two later in the week.

LOL: In my tender yoof, this meant Lots Of Love. Some people still use it as such but it’s more dangerous these days, as it is more generally accepted to mean Laugh(ing) Out Loud. You really don’t want to get unlimited love confused with derisive laughter now, do you? Of course, being the internet, it couldn’t just stop there. Mutations and transformations abound. Here are just a few:

LULZ: As in “I just did it 4 lulz”. There appears to be absolutely no reason why this should be spelled in this way. It just is.

555: From the Thai language. 5 in Thai is pronounced “ha”. Get it?

kek: One of my favourites, made popular in the huge online game World of Warcraft. The game has several invented languages built in – useful if you are in a group attacking another, as all your messages are effectively scrambled. If you type ‘lol’ in the Orcish language, you get ‘kek’.

mdr: This is how the French lol. It stands for ‘mort de rire” (die of laughter).

Naturally, laughing out loud is not always what people are doing when they use this, it’s more of an intensifier, and can be used to suggest sarcasm (which doesn’t always translate in typed text very well), humour, or can be used as something to say when there really is nothing to say. “Three exams in 2 days – v tired, lol”, “I lol’ed” and simply “lol” are all perfectly acceptable uses.

Own/Pwn: This is more or less a possessive, like the original. It also retains its status as a verb. To ‘own’ someone is to have beaten them roundly in an online game. It is also used to mean that something is really good, or that one has done something really well. The origins of the initial P in place of the O are a bit iffy, but for me, the best suggestion is simply a mistyping, with the letters P and O being next to each other on a standard US/UK keyboard.

I totally pwned in that battle: Used as the past participle or perfect tense. Means “I played very well”.

This weapon really pwns: Suggests that the weapon in question is one of the best available.

lol – pwned!: You lost! A very effective tool for mocking a defeated opponent.

Be aware that if you ever decide to use this in conversation, it is still pronounced ‘owned’. It only exists as ‘pwned’ in the written form. If you try to pronounce it ‘pawned’ or ‘pooned’, people will know you’re a noob (shortened from ‘newbie’, a generally derogatory term for a player new to a game or who is simply incompetent or stupid).

Some things simply defy logic:

As with any dialect, net-speak evolves over time. From the simple beginnings of ‘lol’ comes ‘lolomg’ (laughing out loud, oh my god!) which forms the basis of probably the best expression of surprise or shock you’ll find in 9 short letters: lolomgwtf (laughing out loud, oh my god – what the fuck?). For some reason, the short version (omgwtf) has been deemed too short by the internet masses. To rectify this, a further three-letter acronym has been added, just for effect. It’s not uncommon to see ‘omgwtfbbq’. The ‘bbq’ being there as a complete non sequitur. Someone somewhere obviously found it amusing, and it’s stuck.

Of course, no expression in internet chat would be complete without one or more exclamation marks. “Just been to get coffee lol!!” would not be uncommon, even though only one exclamation mark is ever needed, and despite the fact that going to get coffee is neither funny nor that surprising. As with all online chat, the speed of typing can lead to mistakes, which often become an in-joke and can evolve into accepted linguistic currency. The exclamation mark is a shifted 1 on a US/UK keyboard, so a hurried attempt at hitting shift can result in “1!!!”. As if this wasn’t ugly enough to look at, people started spelling out the word ‘one’ as a further intensifier. The result, as seen below is really not very pretty:

OMGWTFBBQ11!!!!one!!

So, to recap on the points above, in true exercise book fashion, I will provide a ‘Dick and Jane” example of a conversation which would take your fat-fingered uncle Tom a week to type were it not for the joys of internet slang:

Dick: i just got pwned!!!

Jane: yh?

Dick: yh by a total noob lol!!

Jane: lol omgwtfbbq1!!!one

I do hope you’re following this, as there will be questions later.