lol

by Steven Steinbock

Earlier this week, Melodie got WORDY on the subject of unpleasant sounding words. She dissed does, gunt, green, and gas among other words. I understand Melodie’s lingual discontent, but frankly I can think of a lot more irritating words.

In the comment section on Tuesday, I kvetched about cummerbund. Something about it sounds oddly perverse and reptilian. Not to mention cumbersome. The object itself is inoffensive, but the thought of wrapping something with that name around a young man’s waist before going participating in a wedding or prom is icky.

Icky is a useful word, but it has an unpleasant ring to it. I suppose it’s appropriate. Likewise, kvetch, which I used in the preceding paragraph, has a grating tone. But again, the thing it describes is itself grating, so it’s reasonable that the word should also be.

But what about odd ones like mellifluous? I came across that one earlier today. The word means “dulcet” or “sweet sounding” and comes from the Latin for “honey-flowing.” But to my ears, it isn’t honey that’s flowing. I keep hearing “effluent” (which has the same Latin root for “flowing” but is more apt to describe sewage).

Then there is the effluence of kid-speak (and kid-text). The words sick and fail come to mind, as well as the obnoxiously ubiquitous lol, rofl and lmao. Sick has come to mean that something is really cool. Ten or twenty years ago, I guess kids were using bitchin’ in the same way. There’s a term for words like that – words that take on their opposite meaning. JLW has probably told me the term more than once, but it’s evaporated in the summer heat.

It is odd, though, that cool and hot are both used to describe things that the speaker likes. But you would never hear a person say, “Wow, that’s really warm” about a new music star.

Fail is a single word statement that my kids use when someone does something wrong. I spill my coffee. . . “Fail.” I use the wrong word for a microprocessor. . . “Fail.” I use a teenage expression in the incorrect context. . . “Fail.” Apparently there’s an age limit on the use of fail. The other day I asked my son if he’d finished a paper that was due in class the next day. “Oh crap,” he said. “I left it at school.”

I looked at him, and in an attempt at coolness (“sickness”) I said, “Fail.”

As soon as the word was out of my mouth, a look of disgust came across my son’s face, and he responded, “Fail.”

I apparently failed at “fail.” What does that make me? Warm?

I thought that Internet shortcut expressions like lol, rofl, and lmao where clever the first time I saw them. But they’d already worn out their cleverness after encountering them a zillion times on discussion boards, emails, and instant messages. But they’ve come to be so common that they’re useless. I find them really dishonest, too. If someone really was rolling on the floor or laughing their ass off, how on earth would they be able to type? Seriously, how many times have you actually been audibly laughing when you typed “lol”? I have three things to say to those of you who persist on peppering your messages with these inanities: “giuf,” “sad,” and “gal.”

Moving on, there’s another ill-sounding word that I want to mention. Unfortunately, I don’t have a better alternative. The word fanzine sounds, to my ears, like it’s either a time-saving device being hawked on late night TV, or it’s the name of a character or an interplanetary race in a 1950s science fiction story.

The word did actually get its start in the science fiction community, which is no surprise. It never ceases to amaze me how many tin ears there are among sf aficionados. But that’s the topic for a separate column which I’ll never write.

Despite my disaffection for the word, fanzines are dear to my heart, and it’s the subject that I’ll devote next week’s column to. But as to the word, it’s an awkward gluing of fan (which is short for “fanatic”) and the last half of magazine (a word that wasn’t meant to be split in two, and means “storehouse” or “publication”).

Perhaps in addition to talking about the histories of several mystery fanzines, next week I’ll share some thoughts about the origin and use of the word magazine. If I do, I’ll tell you about an inaccuracy about firearm terminology that is very common in books, film, and television.