new (or unfamiliar to me) words from undergraduates

[Gwyn Alcock]

The dorm in question was at the University of California, Riverside
(southern California). Speaker was from the Los Angeles Basin somewhere, I
think.

The word was fairly widely used among my dorm-mates in the second sense you
gave below, not in the first sense, as I recall.

G. Alcock
-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Laurence Horn
Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 12:52 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: new (or unfamiliar to me) words from undergraduates

At 11:20 AM -0800 12/31/03, Gwyn Alcock wrote:
>"Moded" may be (related to) "moted", which we used ca. mid-1980s, meaning
>having done something futile, embarrassing, or generally stupid. I have no
>idea where it came from.
>
>Real-life example, spring 1986:
>Woman (a neighbor of mine in the dorms) yelling to the unknown thief who'd
>broken into her car and stolen the stereo:
>"Ha, ha, moted! Stole a car stereo that doesn't work!"
>
>Gwyn Alcock

Interesting.  For me, "moded" and "moted" are indeed homonyms, both
with a voiced flap, but I can't find hide nor hair of either of them
in RHHDAS and I'm virtually certain I've never come across either
before with this meaning.  Is this regional?  Where was the dorm in
question? Anyone else have an origin for this one?  I did find an
entry on an online slang dictionary supporting my student's (and
Gwyn's) intuition, but it doesn't help with either the distribution
or origin:

moded   adj   1. messed up, weird. ("My computer got all moded and
then it crashed.")   2. embarassed. Usually used after someone does
something stupid. ("Now don't you feel moded!")  Submitted by Emily
Marcroft, UC Berkeley, USA, 20-02-1998.

larry