Bling bling is really getting crazy. I saw someone wearing one of these 14" medallions (www.punkhop.com) the other day at a club.

Jay

Dude they need to put in For shizzle my Nizzle yo and SUp my homie gee, and then well, they should just incorporate the whole hip hoptionary into the oxford english dictionary

cbiscuit, a few points:

1. "Acknowledging a half-wit lifestyle only lowers the bar for our society." Should we pretend it doesn't exist? Should we have an authority who decides what is "acceptable" English, and what isn't, and refuse to document "unacceptable" English?

2. "We are becoming a nation of idiots." Which nation is that? The US, where I believe "bling bling" was coined, or England, where I believe the OED is published?

And if this is what proves to you that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, boy do you have strange priorities! People are killing each other all over the world (as usual), but that's OK, as long as they don't use stupid words like "bling bling", huh?

Edited by author 05-12-2003 01:16 PM
Proof that the world is truly going to hell in a handbasket...... Acknowledging a half-wit lifestyle only lowers the bar for our society. We are becoming a nation of idiots.

Growing up, I always viewed the OED as a stodgy old dictionary that was rather resistant to change

It's not, though, and it really never has been. It's slow to change, because they rarely release new editions, and before the Internet it was uncommon to see new entries outside a large library until the next edition was released. But the OED has always been descriptive -- an entry in the OED does not mean that the editors approve of a word, only that they received sufficient evidence that people were using it.

The official phrasing is that it "is a descriptive dictionary, not a prescriptive one. It does not attempt to set a standard of correct English: it records impartially the uses of writers from every part of the English-speaking world and at every level of the social or literary scale."

So "bling-bling" and "blog" belong in the OED, and whether or not they are included in a future edition depends essentially on manpower and allocation of research resources.

(For the record, the opposite of "descriptive" is "prescriptive". There are few if any prescriptive dictionaries these days.)

I heard that 'blog' was being considered for inclusion in the OED. Can anyone comment on the veracity of this?

Growing up, I always viewed the OED as a stodgy old dictionary that was rather resistant to change. It's amusing to see them on the vocabularic front lines of the language.

The OED periodically publishes a list of 'Appeals', asking readers to antedate or postdate words beyond a certain date. The content of most recent Appeal is available at http://www.oed.com/public/readers/appeal.htm . Interestingly, the OED seems to be using Google News to date words now, e.g.


moon-box (theatre - device to produce representation of the moon):
any evidence
(now postdated to 1928 (and 1997 on Google Usenet archive only)

I had assumed "bling bling" was simply the sound diamonds make when they sparkle.

In private correspondance, a high-ranking editor for the OED told me that they haven't drafted an entry for "bling-bling." They haven't posted it online. They entry, he says, "isn't there." They are looking at "bling bling" like they look at all words: too see if it's acceptable. They receive citation slips (well, the modern version) for any word, and then what makes the cut is decided later. Big yawner non-story.

So what's the status of "shizzle" ?

The headline has it wrong, but the article has it right - they're drafting an entry for it, nothing more.

too bad it's not true. "Bling-bling" is not going into the OED.

Edited by author 05-02-2003 09:51 AM
Sure, but "Bling bling will never be forgotten." Let's take our victories where we can.

And in other news, the moon has turned blood red, death is raining from the sky, and the last martyr has died...

the rapper wished he copyrighted the term, this made me wonder why the phrase he "invented" and published in his heavily legally protected lyrics was not "his" and every one else has since been reproducing it.

I realise this is a dumb question which no doubt has an extremely simple answer, but i'd just like to understand, can anyone explain....?

I think I coined 'mouse jockey'. As in someone who spends their days riding a mouse around a field of mouse pad-sized real estate...
I have an October 1998 publication date, with Penguin Books in Australia. I just need more people to start using the term...

Can BoingBoing be far behind?

Bling bling was prison slang, a warning to fellow inmates that authorities were approaching, and to hide any contraband. In essence, a "head's up." I don't know if that has any relation to the now-mainstream meaning.

Edited by author 05-02-2003 01:43 AM
Anyone know the etymology of 'bling bling'? (that is, where did BG get it) A quick web search doesn't pull up anything very useful. I like the apocryphal tale that it came from the sound Mario makes when he gets the gold coins.