[Ads-l] Name for this? -- HSJSHSHSH, ASKSKSKAK

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Tue Aug 21 14:50:36 UTC 2018


The term I've seen for this is "keysmash."

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/magazine/when-you-literally-cant-even-understand-your-teenager.html
"A close relative of 'I can't even' is the keysmash, a string of actual
gibberish -- asdf;lkl, maybe -- meant to signal that the typist has become
so excited that she has lost control of her fingers."

Dictionary.com dates it to the late '90s.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/keysmash
https://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2017/05/30/keysmash


On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 8:51 AM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake <
b.taylorblake at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, those aren't typos in the subject line.
>
> They're, well, words of some sort sometimes used in texts, tweets, and
> elsewhere on social media to convey (extreme) feelings, such as being
> amazed, overwhelmed, excited, frustrated, angry, etc. The string of letters
> suggest *rushed* exclamations. The only convention is that they're all from
> the middle row of a QWERTY keyboard.
>
> Here are some examples, all taken from recent tweets (it's a little tough
> to search for this sort of thing since there are no standard forms):
>
> 1) "ok but is she still beefin with jimin HSJSHSHSH"
>
> 2) "so grimes and Elon musk unfollowed each other on ig and grimes still
> follows Azealia Banks kskdkdksksksk"
>
> 3) "ASKSKSKAK WE NEED MORE TEA"
>
> I'm curious whether linguists/lexicographers have a name for this form of
> (written) language. An entry at knowyourmeme.com suggests kinship with the
> grawlix.
>
> More at https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/asdf
>
>

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