"teh" + adj./v.

[Joel S. Berson]

I would have thought "teh" was not a misspelling of "the" but a
"phonetic" misspelling of "too" and "to"?   That is, not "the sexy"
but "too sexy", and not "the rule" but "to rule"?

Joel

At 9/22/2005 10:02 AM, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
>Subject:      "teh" + adj./v.
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Blogs these days are full of examples of "teh", an intentional misspelling
>of "the" arising from leetspeak (hacker code). Unlike "the", "teh" often
>modifies an adjective (teh sexy, teh crazy, teh funny, teh wacky, teh
>lame, teh gay), or an intransitive verb (teh suck, teh rock, teh rule).
>The resulting quasi-NP tends to be used predicatively ("he is teh sexy" =
>"he is sexy", "you are teh rule" = "you rule", etc.).
>
>Wikipedia illuminates the history of "teh", tracing its popularity to the
>website Something Awful and its parodic hacker persona "JeffK" (also
>evidently responsible for popularizing such epithets as "asshat").
>
>-----
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teh
>"Teh" is a common typo for the. [...] In the online slang known as Leet,
>it is deliberately used in place of _the_, and occasionally spelled _t3h_
>with a numeral 3 in place of _e_. _Teh_ and _t3h_ are the traditional
>spellings of the in the phrase "ph34r t3h ..." (Fear the...).
>Besides being an alternate spelling of _the_, _teh_ also has grammatical
>properties not generally applied to _the_. It can be used with proper
>names, as in "teh John." [...]
>Furthermore, _teh_ is sometimes used in front of a verb, turning it into a
>species of compound noun chain. The best-known example of this is the word
>_suck_. Thus, the phrase _this sucks_ can be converted into _this is teh
>suck_; the word _pwn_ can be similarly converted (_teh pwn_). The above
>phrases are primarily used by the gaming community, and often intended
>humorously.
>In English, _the_ can be used as an intensifier for the superlative form
>of adjectives; compare "that is best" and "that is _the_ best." _Teh_ has
>a similar use as an intensifier for unmodified adjectives, generally
>marking a sarcastic tone. For example, "that is _teh_ lame" translates as
>"that is _the lamest_." [...]
>The widespread popularity of purposefully using Teh on Internet forums and
>other forms of communication most likely stemmed from the fictitious
>character JeffK (created by humour website Something Awful), who often
>mispelled words on his homepage in a parody on a certain stereotype of
>Internet user.
>-----
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffk
>Jeff K. is one of several fictitious update writers for the popular humor
>website Something Awful. Created by Something Awful founder Rich "Lowtax"
>Kyanka on May 28, 1999 on PlanetQuake, Jeff K. is a parody of teenage
>Internet users, particularly script kiddies and online game players.
>Jeff K. once claimed to be a "l33t hax0r" (an "elite hacker" in leetspeak)
>but is now a "computar consultant becuase hax0ring si illegal" (sic). Jeff
>K.'s writing style is characterized by generally horrible spelling,
>flipping the positions of letters in words, and alternately writing in all
>caps and all lowercase (contrary to popular perception, he did not
>generally replace letters with numbers as in leetspeak). He is also known
>for combining words to create insults such as "clownboat", "slobbergoat"
>and "asshat", and bad web design skills. He has coined several phrases
>that have entered more widespread usage in other Internet communities,
>most notably the use of teh*, as in the phrase "teh funney" (now often
>misspelled further as "teh funnay"). Although the term "asshat" predates
>Jeff K., he certainly popularized it, and it has begun appearing as
>pejorative slang in other online forums like fark.com. [...]
>The name "Jeff K." might be a reference to Sun software engineer Jeff
>Kesselman, who is notorious for making frequent spelling mistakes, such as
>"teh" and similar, in newsgroup and forum posts.
>-----
>
>Though "JeffK" dates to 1999, exx. of "teh funny/funney/funnay", "teh
>suck", etc. don't begin showing up in the Usenet archive until early 2001.
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer