So it is with great delight that we learn from one of our readers that the word “book” has taken on a cool new meaning — I use the adjective advisedly. Jeffrey Stark from London writes: “A colleague recently noticed that her teenage son and his friends were using the word ‘book’ as a term of approval, as in ‘that T-shirt is really book’. She wondered why. It transpires that if you text the word ‘cool’, predictive texting turns it into ‘book’. Being lazy teenagers they would rather change the meaning of the word than hit the options button.”I’m not sure which I love more, the elevation of the word book to mean cool, or that this word development is happening out of sheer laziness.
Thanks to Proper Noun for alerting me to the trend.
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14 comments:
That's hilarious! I remember as a teenager trying to make new phrases sound cool. Of course, I spent my formative teen years in the San Fernando Valley and my husband swears that I still sound like a "Valley Girl" when I get on the phone with high school friends. Yeah, right. Like, I am so sure. I do NOT sound like a Val anymore. That is so, like, y'know?
I. love. this. I wonder how else texting will change our language for the better? (We always hear the bad stuff, so this is refreshing.)
I want to thank the programer who made it so that "cool" is recognized as "book" -- she's the real hero here!
I saw that at Mindy's, and it just Cracked. Me. Up. Laziness: it's the wave of the future... eventually.
What a "book" post you have written. Like I totally get it. (I, too, lived in the valley. You can take the girl out of the valley but not the valley out of the girl). Thanks.
Ha! That is awesome! Er... That is book!
Great post! Totally phat, or off the hook, or book! It's actually quite interesting to me to see how IM, texting, and email are affecting the books for even younger readers like the Madison Finn series my third grader loves. It uses alot of "LOL" and similar language.
Like Sara, I. love. this.
With a big, fat, hairy sort of love. I hope it means that the words are so equivalent that reading increases.
This is too fun -- um, book -- and you, dear MotherReader, are the One Who Can Pull it Off. I hear your voice saying it, and it's so book. I don't suppose I can use it in my historical fantasy, though, huh?
Great that it does that, but sad that they are that lazy.
this is really too funny. I wonder how many language changes are really the result of laziness?
Ahhhh...the young
The laziness totally makes this, for me. I love it!
Hysterical. I was not aware of this phenonenom! I will now be asking my 12 year-old neighbors (expert texters) all about it.
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