Did you notice the parentheses in the title? If you didn’t, now is the moment that you would want to look at the title and recognize them by their usual, ubiquitous curvy nature. Are you wondering why the parentheses are in the title? Do they mean something? Or is it that the author has had a few too many today?!?
If words such as ‘pwned’, ‘noob’ and ‘rotflol’ are less than chic and bordering more on the likes of a large question mark hovering over your head, you are getting old. I came to realize my senility only one year back or so, when I couldn’t glean what the above words meant.
"Surely, they must just be gibberish", said I.
"Surely, someone forgot the spell check function in their favorite word processor...” I pondered.
"Surely, he has had a few too many today!” I quipped.
Turns out these are overtly used to escape verbiage! I figured out that ‘noob‘ meant newbie, ‘rotflol‘ was a useful acronym for rolling on the floor laughing out loud — a very useful chat-room acronym. ‘Pwned‘ is a little trickier to get the gist of. It happens to be an urbanized corruption of the word owned in a way to signify that your ruddy backside was blasted to bits in the recent game of Quake Live (a first person shooter computer game that is making waves with its online version!) or whatever it is that kids play these days! Hey, don’t get me wrong! I play a bit of Quake myself but I haven’t gotten around to using the diluted dialect that goes with it!!!
WDYK about DYK?
What Do You Know about Do You Know?!
As for the mysterious parentheses that appear in the title are the contemporary version of the "double-quote-finger-gesture" to indicate that what you’re saying is actually the opposite of what you mean! Since when has grammar been subjected to rules of (contemporary) fashion?! Got it?!
If you’d like to be introduced to some more fascinating aspects of the “twitter-y” life that people (read: of ages 16-30) are addicted to, you might want to visit www.urbandictionary.com
Maybe while you are there you should search for the meaning of your name… Just a suggestion!
KPG! Keep the Party Going!
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You know I was thinking of urbandictionary.com initially when I started reading the article its very useful nowadays !! and you mentioned it
@ Dhiman:
It is useful yes but embarrassing too! Did you check what your name meant on Urban-dictionary?!? If you did, how embarrassing was it on a scale of 1-10 (10 being, “I would like to leap of a cliff now”
For me, it was about a 17/10 if you know what I mean!
@ Aneet:
I checked my name ! Am proud of my name even in urban lingo
‘Pwned‘ is the equivalent of ‘face-melting’ as used in WoW for a Shadow spec priest…
What?
I used to play World of Warcraft… and hence the lingo
Seems like I should start playing comp games to be updated with urban lingo
@ Ambi:
Hey, face melting, a#s belting…. all the same!
@Aneet:
Lol! Never heard of a** belting on WoW before.
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