According to an article I found the other day, some people on Twitter are playing with language in interesting ways and creating new abbreviations and words like tradge (tragic), bluebs (blueberries), emosh (emotional) and hilars (hilarious) and atrosh (atrocious).
This phenomenon has been dubbed totesing by the linguists Lauren Spradlin and Taylor Jones, who have collected and analyzed many examples of totesing and discovered that such abbreviations are not random. Instead they follow a definite pattern which involves removing the parts of words after their stressed syllables, but retaining a consonant or two after it. For example, subconsciously becomes subconsh and aphrodisiac becomes aphrodeez – the spelling is also altered some times.
The favorite intensifier is totes, from totally.
Some such abbreviations have been around for quite a while, others are new.
Here are a few I found on Twitter:
– You people are so totes adorbs when you’re watching a game.
– Hey guys it’s #nationalhugday! So we’re asking, ever received a totes awks hug?
– You got me. I’m totes jelz of guys too dumb to know supporting Trump should be a point of shame instead of pride.
– totes inapprops
– it’s gonna be a totes perf weekend
Do you use these kinds of words? Have you come across any interesting ones?
Are similar things being done to other languages?
Not a new phenomenon as the words ‘phone, pram, bus and fridge’ demonstrate. I always took it as a tendency to make common borrowed words fit the phonemic pattern of the inherited English wordhoard.
I used to be addicted to “totes” and “obvs” back in 2010-2011 or so. And back when I was at a summer camp as a teenager, the campers would dance too close together or something, and the counselors would butt in and say “inapprop!”
I like Ned’s view that it makes borrowed words fit into English’s phonemic pattern. That’s really interesting, and I think it makes sense.
The only ones I’ve encountered in widespread use are “totes” and “deets” (details), but that’s probably because I interact mostly with people who are relatively conservative in their use of English.
“Whatevs” is one I’ve heard and used.