"teh" + adj./v.

[Lal Zimman]

This word is very common on LiveJournal, which I use frequently, and
I've been known to say "teh x" myself every once in a while. It's
definitely a misspelling of "the".. to me, "teh cool" means "the
epitome of coolness".

-Lal

On Sep 22, 2005, at 8:31 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "teh" + adj./v.
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>
> 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:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
>> Subject:      "teh" + adj./v.
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>>
>> 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
>>
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