Sunday, June 12, 2011

lol update

I was kinda starting to miss lol, without quite knowing it, until a young linguist, Tanner S., took a look at the development of acronyms and initialisms in recent American English (unpublished manuscript). Some of the data on lol and related terms is pretty cool:
lol-worthy, lolable, lolacaust, lolcano, lollercoaster, lolrus
roflcopter, roflsaurus
A few compounds I knew about (lolcat, etc.) and I'd heard some of these blends (though I googled lolrus to see what parts of the story I might be missing). And I had heard it as a verb and as an interjection, but hadn't particularly thought about it as a noun:
A picture is worth 1000 lolz.
Gee, maybe it hasn't ruined the language after all.

Image from here.
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5 comments:

  1. Unknown12:02 AM

    For what it's worth, the comic was originally from Toothpaste For Dinner, which has its stuff lifted pretty often :-\

    http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=091607

    Lovely blog! Language is alive! \m/

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  2. Joe6:25 AM

    OMG. I actually knew that the drawing style was familiar but couldn't make the connection. I'll fix that.

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  3. Anonymous9:17 PM

    IT'S FROM LEFTHANDEDTOONS.COM

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  4. Anonymous9:32 PM

    lolololololol take that 6 year olds!!!

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  5. Anonymous8:42 PM

    i am sorry but this tempt me to say lol and sorry six year old but just.....
    lololol

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