Twitter's loved and hated words (WOTY: thot, bae, ratchet)

[Laurence Horn]

On Nov 29, 2013, at 4:34 AM, Hugo wrote:

> @LOVIHATIBOT
>
> In a similar vein to @favibot, I made @lovihatibot. It's been running a month now and has found 3,698 loved words and 4,605 hated words.
>
> It searches Twitter for the phrases "I love the word [X]" and "I hate the word [X]", extracts X and adds it to Wordnik lists. It then tweets out the words it finds.
>
> http://twitter.com/lovihatibot
> http://www.wordnik.com/lists/twitter-loves
> http://www.wordnik.com/lists/twitter-hates
> https://github.com/hugovk/word-tools
>
> Along with the usual swear words, two of the most popular words are words I've never heard before: "thot" and "bae".

I assume the haters are upset with those who use "thot" for "thought".  About "bae" I have no idea.

> They're the top two hated words, and 4th and 5th loved words. (An honourable mention to "ratchet", another new one to me and on both lists.)

Very popular on my students' new word lists, and a WOTY candidate from I believe last year. Ben will remember. Proposed but unconfirmed etymology: variation of "wretched".

LH

>
> I'll nominate them as words of the year.
>
> Here's word clouds:
>
> Loved: https://twitter.com/lovihatibot/status/406343752622415872/photo/1/large
> Hated: https://twitter.com/lovihatibot/status/406344530267353089/photo/1/large
>
> Loved words contains 3,698 words and 2,083 unique words. The top 20 words are:
> 1. cunt (122)
> 2. fuck (107)
> 3. thot (58)
> 4. bitch (58)
> 5. bae (45)
> 6. woman (32)
> 7. baby (30)
> 8. babe (30)
> 9. sassy (30)
> 10. rad (27)
> 11. lovely (23)
> 12. moist (23)
> 13. twat (23)
> 14. ratchet (21)
> 15. beautiful (16)
> 16. faggot (16)
> 17. hella (15)
> 18. no (14)
> 19. love (14)
> 20. darling (14)
>
>
> Hated words contains 4,605 words and 1,651 unique words. The top 20 words are:
> 1. thot (272)
> 2. bae (244)
> 3. no (117)
> 4. moist (114)
> 5. homophobia (111)
> 6. swag (72)
> 7. selfie (65)
> 8. sorry (54)
> 9. cunt (53)
> 10. excuse (53)
> 11. pussy (53)
> 12. sexy (45)
> 13. panties (42)
> 14. love (35)
> 15. soon (32)
> 16. babe (32)
> 17. ratchet (30)
> 18. lol (30)
> 19. ma (29)
> 20. bye (27)
>
> Here's examples in real life, you can see it's used lots on Twitter by how often "X new results" is updated:
> http://twitter.com/search?q=thot
> http://twitter.com/search?q=bae
> http://twitter.com/search?q=bae%20thot
> http://www.courant.com/community/manchester/hc-manchester-bullying-arrest-1128-20131127,0,4589514.story
> http://www.vladtv.com/blog/175497/50-cent-alerts-mayweather-about-his-girl-getting-with-ray-j/
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roAbuIyzPmI#t=10
>
> ---
>
> THOT
>
> Ignoring two 2006s which are a different meaning, the highest voted Urban Dictionary definition is the earliest:
>
> [Begin]
> A Thot is a hoe. Plural: Thotties
> Marquan: Yo thats my main girl
> Deshaun: She yo main girl but she my main thot
> hoe slut whore bitch bop
> by Trillllll July 26, 2012
> 3474 up, 1226 down
> [End]
>
> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thot
>
> Other definitions explain it's an abbreviation for "that hoe over there" (or similar).
>
> ---
>
> BAE
>
> New to me, but older than "thot" according to Urban Dictionary. Top definition:
>
> [Begin]
> A lover or significant other
> Bae come here so I can kiss you.
> boo lover significant other boyfriend girlfriend
> by bubbless August 11, 2006
> [End]
>
> Another definition explains it's an abbreviation of "babe":
>
> [Begin]
> Word used by ghetto people to address their significant other because they have found themselves too lazy to pronounce the entire word "babe".
> [End]
>
> Similarly in the earliest from 2003:
>
> [Begin]
> A bastardization of the term 'babe' as pronounced typically in a Vietnamese accent.
> [End]
>
> ---
>
> Rap Genius's Rap Stats shows "thot" from 2010 and "bae" from 2005:
>
> http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=thot%2Cbae
>
> They have 132 songs with "thot" and 73 with "bae".
>
> (Does anyone know if you can search Rap Genius by date, like you can go from a Google Ngram to Google Books? They obviously have the metadata to create the Rap Stats charts, but I can't find any advanced search, and individual lyrics pages are missing years meaning you need to check an external source.)
>
> ---
>
> Hugo
>
> PS There's a spambot out there that's messing with my wordbot. The spambot replies to people with "I love the word douchebag." and a spam image, but I've selectively filtered it out of my results otherwise "douchebag" would be number 1 with 1,248 results instead of at 30 with 11!
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org