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People coin new words all the time. Until the 1920s, the word “geek” referred to a freak who ate live animals. In the ’20s, college students started the freakish act of swallowing live goldfish. America’s anti-intellectuals started calling anyone who held a higher degree, or even read a lot, as a “geek”.
That, at least, was understandable. It at least made sense. Then in 1954 Theodor Geisel, writing under the pen name Dr. Suess, wrote If I Ran the Zoo. Mr. Geisel made up a lot of words in his childrens’ stories, including the “Grinch,” which became the new “Scrooge”. In If I Ran the Zoo he coined “nerd”, one of the animals in McGrew's zoo.
A little over a decade later I was in high school, and the epithet I was called was “nerd”, since I was an avid reader who wore glasses with thick lenses. How “nerd" came to be anti-intellectuals’ “smart guy” I have no clue, unless I was the first to be called that name. I find that explanation highly doubtful.
While I was being called “nerd”, the twentieth century's dumbest word so far was born: Groovy.
Where did that stupid word come from? Fortunately for me, I never heard that word uttered from any human’s mouth. I suspect that marketers made it up, because I only heard it occasionally in a song lyric (along with a stupid word only heard on the west coast, “gnarly") or, more often, in an advertisement.
I thought I would never hear a more moronic word than “groovy”. But then, I thought I’d never see a worse president than Carter, until Shrub came along and got us attacked, in two wars, and turned a booming economy and a balanced budget into the worst economy since the Great Depression and the largest budget deficit in history.
I was proven wrong about “groovy” before the century was out. Some wannabe hipster shortened “web log”, a perfectly logically phrase, to “blog”. Unlike “groovy”, that one stuck. We’re still using that stupid word a quarter of a century later. Once again I thought I would never hear a dumber word, and once again I was proven wrong.
The marketers came up with BOGO, which indicated that if you buy one item, you get the second one free. “Buy one, get one.” But that is incredibly stupid! If I buy a car, I get one car. If I buy one hamburger, I get one hamburger.
Now, BOGOF would have sounded just as stupid, but at least it would have had a modicum of logic behind it. BOGO? Brain-dead stupid.
I hope I don’t live long enough to hear an even dumber word, it was as inevitable as Bush not being the worst president in my lifetime, as Trump has out-incompetented every other president since Eisenhower, the first president I can ever remember, as he was elected when I was six months old.
If one worse than Trump comes along, our nation is doomed. It's a good thing you can’t say that about your groovy BOGO blog!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @04:59PM
YOLO
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @07:48PM (2 children)
Soyboy, cuck, simp and all the other thought-terminating cliches of modern political internet discourse.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @09:57PM
intersectionality
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @08:32PM
Genderqueer.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @09:39PM (1 child)
ＮＩＧＧＥＲ
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:08PM
Read that 1916 thing to learn why that word is so hateful and why it's not stupid at all.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Sunday September 06 2020, @09:56PM (2 children)
BOGO a term that looks like bogus, surely gonna impress the public.
I can't believe you don't accept "groovy" after this https://youtu.be/etviGf1uWlg [youtu.be] , even if of course you might have been led astray by the illuminati symbology in the otherwise solid pop tune https://youtu.be/52iW3lcpK5M [youtu.be]
And by the way, to be talking about the true underground:
- love
- wat
- ullallalalalalalalaa
https://youtu.be/tvXi6BDOMv8 [youtu.be]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @08:36PM (1 child)
I'd think, especially due to OP's age, that this [youtube.com] would be much more apropos.
What's more, in each of the songs you reference, it's "groove" not "groovy". Perhaps that's a language problem, but I'm guessing it's low brain capacity problem instead, given your normal mentally defective spew.
And by the way, you have terrible taste in music.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:22AM
I guess it all depends on
'how do you say: the groovy'
which is the very first phrase of the very first video I posted.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. I've seen AC posting spectacular fails. And all these moments will be lost in time, except for the AC post which will stay in the database for a little while. LOL
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Monday September 07 2020, @01:09AM (3 children)
Do you suppose that if Bush Jr. hadn't come along to fuck everything else up, the tech bubble wouldn't have burst?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @01:35AM
When is the current tech bubble going to burst? I'm sick of reading obviously made up fan fiction by FAANG fanbois who don't code about how coders get paid six figures in their tech fantasies.
"Techbro" is the dumbest word.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 07 2020, @01:38AM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 07 2020, @02:09AM
The tech bubble started bursting in late March 2000 when accounting changes meant that a bunch of shifty firms could no longer stuff the channel (that is, count product that they shipped to resellers as sold even though it hadn't been sold) and a few other shenanigans. Dubya wasn't a factor then. A few months later in August, I got laid off from a job I never started when VC pulled the plug on the business (yet more web-based medical advice) I was about to start working at. The IPO market had dried up and the effects were trickling down the start up pipelines. Fun times.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday September 07 2020, @01:11AM
Mellow college students swallowing live goldfishes are meek.
In elementary school, we made a freak contest of eating a live spider.
It's bittersour, I can tell.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 07 2020, @01:36AM (5 children)
My guess is that it comes from the grooves of phonographic records - yielding such things as "in the groove", "grooving", and "groovy".
As to words that near the nadir of stupidity and are along the same theme as "blog", we have "blogarati".
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday September 07 2020, @03:20AM (3 children)
Way back in the 50's or 60's I read that explanation of "groovy" in some magazine or other that was explaining modern slang to the incognoscenti.
I've sometimes wondered whether that's a bowdlerized explanation and it actually originated as a sexual reference.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:41AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday September 08 2020, @01:40PM
True. But the 1930's and 1940's were a heyday for sexual codewords in subcultures, notably among jazz musicians.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:57AM
dick cheney
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 07 2020, @05:41PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Monday September 07 2020, @01:43AM (5 children)
Contraction of "in the groove". Sliding right along, all good, groovy.
Also see Copacetic, tubular
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday September 07 2020, @05:50AM (4 children)
I agree. I was thinking along the lines of a needle in a record groove making far-out sound, since it seems to be what mostly stoners say (stoners dig the music).
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday September 07 2020, @02:37PM (3 children)
Google says that jazz musicians called groovy what resembled the grooves on a record, both tight and flowing. Referred to performance it makes sense. It also points to a good performance being candidate to be put on grooves. My take is that people picked it up as a simple reference to the vinyl record.
Funnily enough we used a word that has something to do with grooves, which the barrel of a gun has. Till the 80s one thing that was very effective, or very performant, useful, in a positive way, was called a "cannonata" (cannon blast).
- hey hows the new computer of yours doing?
- the C64? una cannonata, has so much memory you could fit a whole book in it.
- me' cojoni! (this is better left unexplained, just remember that 'sticazzi is always sarcastic appreciation and me' cojoni is always genuine)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:21PM (2 children)
It's still weak but useable, unlike the Acer Iconia tablet I bought three years ago. Owned computers since 1982 and that tablet is the worst computer I ever used. I still wouldn't recommend that Dell unless it was cheaper than thirty bucks. That said, I bought a new Logitech remote keyboard/mouse combo which allows me to use the big TV as a monitor, and that fixed quite a few problems.
You cannot fit a 40,000 word novel (the smallest novel) in a 64,000 byte memory space, mathematically impossible.
Never hears 'sticazzi, is that Italian? Cahones is balls, mierde is shit, puta is cunt... If you learn Spanish in school and use it among native speakers, sooner or later you'll learn to cuss in Spanish.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:54AM (1 child)
> You cannot fit a 40,000 word novel (the smallest novel) in a 64,000 byte memory space, mathematically impossible.
yeah but I said BOOK, not novel.
For example, the book titled 'list of non hypocritical Italian leftist' fits a C64, for that matter it fits an unexpanded VIC 20 or an Olivetti programma 101. Whereas I reliably stored the book titled 'inspiring words from Azuma' in /dev/null
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:07AM
As for the rest 'sticazzi means literally these cocks translated it's mock appreciation for something irrelevant, me'coioni means my balls, translated it's genuine appreciation.
- kid
- wat
- dad bought an audi
- e 'sticazzi (you can prefix with e, and)
- but it's an r8
- e 'sti gran cazzi (superlative)
vs.
- kid
- wat
- dad bought a countach
- mecojoni
- but it's a replica
- doesn't matter as long as it's v12
- of course, a v8 would be anathema.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @02:55AM
America is black, brother! And Sammy Davis gave it to the Jews!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Monday September 07 2020, @09:46AM (1 child)
In my mind, the dumbest words this century are the moronically re-defined, misused, or mis-spelled variants of existing words, such as "woah" or "fraught."
That's actually a fairly old word that originally referred to plants with gnarled protrusions or roots. It was adapted logically in the 1970s by surfers to describe similarly rough, dangerous waves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:25PM
Marked you informative for the Newsweek reference. Wonder if that's where Dr. Ted came up with it?
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday September 07 2020, @09:50AM
Dammit, I hit 'submit' instead of 'preview' again...grr...here's a fixed version:
--
In my mind, the dumbest words this century are the moronically re-defined, misused, or mis-spelled variants of existing words, such as "woah" or "fraught."
That's actually a fairly old word that originally referred to plants with gnarled protrusions or roots. It was adapted logically in the 1970s by surfers to describe similarly rough, dangerous waves.
Actually, it came into existence at least a few years earlier — in 1951, Newsweek reported that in Detroit, "nerd" was being used as a synonym for the words "drip" (drab, ineffectual person) or a "square" (someone out of touch with musical trends), which pretty much explains how it ended up being used to refer to bookish people.
I've never thought that "web log" really made sense when applied to anything other than a technical/scientific online logbook or MOTD. The first term I recall encountering for that was "journal" back around 2000-2001, which has always seemed to match the contents of most "blogs" a lot better than "web log" did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @04:20PM (1 child)
It is an acronym instead. It stands for:
(B)uy (O)one (G)et (O)ne
Although its common usage (buy one, get a second additional one free) does not fully fit the words that form the acronym, because a literal English interpretation of "buy one get one" would mean you bought a single thing, and ended up with a single thing.
It is also a sneaky way to offer "half price" while not offering "half price".
Those who notice the sale, and buy two for the price of one get both at half off.
Those who fail to notice the sale, and buy just one, pay full price for that one.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:27PM
Yes, and I explained in detail why that was stupid. If I buy a hamburger I get one. Buy One Get One Free would be BOGOF.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @07:53PM (1 child)
Hipster's no longer trendy since 2015 [theguardian.com] (grin)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @04:41AM
About when things started getting a little too hot for the original hipster, Gavin McInnes, in the Proud (Racist) Boys, and his neighbors wanted him out (because, racist), and his facial hair was not longer "hipster" but more "dirty old man" looking. So, no more hipsters. But Beats are still cools, Dharma Bums, Hippies retro, and the always cool "Beatniks". But the alt-right youngsters, the whole thing is bad vibes, man, hate and misogyny and violence!! They need some acid, not Trump! Be groovy, and Peace out, dudes!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @09:01PM
I'd start with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So0ZrTwf8vI [youtube.com]
then move on to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Eji8obIOjI [youtube.com] but I should probably provide some context to that, so here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2anYvN5_E_s [youtube.com] [NSFW. Well, it's really not safe for most places. In fact, you probably just shouldn't watch it at all. Never mind.]
And we can move right along to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groovy#Song_titles [wikipedia.org] and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ2yQXzw1y5fu7mHpYUlLLQ [youtube.com] and even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Groovy [wikipedia.org]
So come on friend, don't be a square. Everything is groovy over there!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:10AM
I thought I didn't have prefs for the dumbest word, but now that I think about it
"ecologic"
the word by itself is perfectly fine, the use is inappropriate, reduced to a synonym of "eco-respectful"
Another trainwreck is in italy
allarmato = "alarmed"
to design a place protected by an alarm.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:26PM (1 child)
Groovy is a language that runs on the JVM. (Java Virtual Machine -- a runtime platform)
Now called Apache Groovy and part of the Apache Foundation.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Sunday September 20 2020, @07:59PM
That use I can accept, it's no dumber than Wi-fi. I never could understand that, hi-fi was short for High Fidelity. What's Wi-Fi short for? "We're In Fucking Idiotland"?
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience