Racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and sexism currently serve as the basis for some of the most popular definitions on the site. By allowing anyone to post definitions (users can up or down vote their favorite ones) Peckham opened the door for the most insidious among us. It transformed into a harbor for hate speech. In time, however, the site began to espouse the worst of the internet-Urban Dictionary became something much uglier than perhaps what Peckham set out to create. Under Lady Gaga, one top entry describes her as "a very bad joke played on all of us by Tim Burton." For LeBron James, it reads: "To bail out on your team when times get tough." his eyeliner could literally kill a man") even my name, Jason, has an insane 337 definitions (my favorite one, which I can attest is 1,000 percent true: "the absolute greatest person alive"). You can find definitions for just about anything or anyone: from popular phrases like Hot Girl Summer ("a term used to define girls being unapologetically themselves, having fun, loving yourself, and doing YOU") and In my bag ("the act of being in your own world focused being in the zone on your grind") to musicians like Pete Wentz ("an emo legend. Today, Urban Dictionary averages around 65 million visitors a month, according to data from SimilarWeb, with almost 100 percent of its traffic originating via organic search. In interviews, Peckham has said the site began as a joke, as a way to mock, but it didn't take long before it ballooned into a thriving corpus. Founded by Aaron Peckham in 1999-then a computer science major at Cal Poly-the site became notorious for allowing what sanctioned linguistic gatekeepers, such as the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster, would not: a plurality of voice. Not all the definitions were so flattering.Urban Dictionary, now in its 20th year, is a digital repository that contains more than 8 million definitions and famously houses all manner of slang and cultural expressions. For instance, just like on Twitter and elsewhere, the majority of UD entries define “Karen” as an entitled white woman - “typically blonde” - complaining to authority figures over the slightest inconvenience that doesn’t “even remotely” affect her. Of course, not every term has such a complimentary connotation on the street slang site. “No offence but absolutely nobody is reading ur urban dictionary names,” scoffed one critic on Twitter.Īnother jokester posted a screenshot for an Urban Dictionary entry for Elijah, which was defined as someone who “doesn’t give af what your names mean on Urban Dictionary.” Urban Dictionary didn’t discriminate against foreign-sounding names. Of course, many Twitter users weren’t super impressed with the etymological pursuit, which they found a tad self-congratulatory in nature. Per another tweet, which a satisfied user captioned “Urban Dictionary speaks nothing but facts,” the Korean name Junho means “a sexy Korean with a big a–.” She is hard to anger, but once angered, beware.” UD enthusiasts shared the results to Twitter.Īnd the viral vocab compendium doesn’t discriminate against more diverse names. Non materialistic and she picks her friends like she picks her fruit. “She loves hard & drama free,” the submission read. Meanwhile, one of the top-rated Urban Dictionary definitions for Brandi was the “illest and dopest chick you’ll ever meet,” per another tweet. Ben, as defined by the top entry in Urban Dictionary. For instance, “Ben” - a Hebrew word meaning “son of the right hand” - is defined by Urban Dictionary as “a cute, tall dark and handsome boy” whom you can “take home to your mamma.” Or, per the top-rated entry with 1,415 upvotes, a “duck overlord” who “can perform mind control on ducks of all kinds.”īy a similar token, a Twitter user named Johanna was overjoyed to find that her name was synonymous with “one of the most Angelic people you can ever meet,” among other flattering definitions. The online journey of self-discovery is simple: Just type in one’s name and generate a plethora of hilarious moniker meanings. The bizarro name game is currently going viral as users flock to Twitter to share the results. Urban Dictionary is often viewed as a sophomoric source for dirty words, but now bored social media users have tapped into the crowd-sourced glossary for something novel - to find alternative definitions for their names not found in the Oxford English Dictionary. They’re letting the dictionary define them as a person. ‘Petfluencer’ among hundreds of new words added to ĬEO accuses dictionary publishers of ‘sexism,’ ‘ageism’ in definitions of ‘beauty’ Tinder launches dating dictionary to decode Gen Z language for older singles California man who made threats against Merriam-Webster over ‘gender identity’ gets 1 year in prison
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |