belated WOTY

[Miller, Jerry]

Dennis: I guess what is scary is that, before long Internet shorthand (which
is where I first came into contact with "my bad," being a long way from
either playground basketball sites or the East Coast) will "worm" its way
into the language as real words -- e.g., "lol," "imho" (pronounced "im-ho"
presumably), or even "woty" (pronounced "woe-tee"?).

Jerry Miller


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis R. Preston [SMTP:preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU]
> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2000 3:30 PM
> To:   ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject:      Re: belated WOTY
>
> "My bad" is way too old (and not exclusively so important this year) to be
> WOTY this year (at least among us old-jocks).
> But why is such usage "scary"? What's gonna happen?
>
> dInIs
>
>
> >I'm sure I am very late in chiming in on the Word of the Year (and I am
> >probably repeating what someone else suggested but I missed), but, in a
> >mental flash of lightning, it dawned on me what the WOTY had to be. That
> >would be "bad" used as a noun, as in (cybertalk) "my bad."
> >This all came to me when I heard a sports announcer for one of the bowl
> >games on TV use it to explain why a player tapped his own chest after a
> play
> >was botched. It gets very scary when Internet shorthand edges toward
> >standard usage.
> >
> >Jerry Miller
> >Pulliam School of Journalism
> >Franklin College
> >millerj at franklincoll.edu
>
>
> Dennis R. Preston
> Department of Linguistics and Languages
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
> preston at pilot.msu.edu
> Office: (517)353-0740
> Fax: (517)432-2736