How the Internet affects language
A large fraction of the English-speaking population uses the Internet and terms and jargon from the Internet have an effect on the English language. The Sunday New York Times magazine section recently had a column relating how the word “fail” has evolved from a verb to an interjection and is on its way to being an adjective as well:
Time was, fail was simply a verb that denoted being unsuccessful or falling short of expectations. It made occasional forays into nounhood, in fixed expressions like without fail and no-fail. That all started to change in certain online subcultures about six years ago. In July 2003, a contributor to Urbandictionary.com noted that fail could be used as an interjection “when one disapproves of something,” giving the example: “You actually bought that? FAIL.
The column continues:
In a few years’ time, the use of fail as an interjection caught on to such an extent that particularly egregious objects of ridicule required an even stronger barb: major fail, überfail, massive fail or, most popular of all, epic fail. The intensifying adjectives hinted that fail was becoming a new kind of noun: not simply a synonym for failure but, rather, a derisive label to slap on a miscue that is eminently mockable in its stupidity or wrongheadedness. Online cynics deploy fail as a countable noun (“That’s such a fail!”) and also as a mass noun that treats failure as an abstract quality: the offending party is often said to be full of fail or made of fail.
Another, more transient, effect of the Internet is in the area of slang. In today’s Styles section, the New York Times discusses how slang terms are spread by the Internet and how they come and go:
LAST week, if you wanted to use the latest slang to tell a friend he was cool, you could have called him “Obama,” as in: “Dude, you’re rocking the new Pre phone? You are so Obama.”
This week? Best not to risk it.
The sudden shift in meaning has nothing to do with the fortunes of the president, regardless of what the health care debate may do to his cool factor. The fault rests entirely with what has happened to the life span of slang, which seems to shorten with every click of the mouse.
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