Tuesday 15 April 2008

Word of the day

Today's word is from Dana, who refers to Open Reading Frame, Bill Hooker's blog. Commenting on a blog post by Gavin Baker (to Open Access News), he says: "I realise that netonyms have been passé among the hipsterati for some time . . ." and makes some comments about the use of pseudonyms on the internet.

But which is the word of the day? Definitely netonym I think. It is certainly a new coinage, and there are few uses of it online so far. It is also a word which we can use - Langmaker defines it as an online identity or handle, constructed from internet and pseudonym. Dana might have used it in her own post on net pseudonymity, or not.

The Urban Dictionary defines hipsterati, which is pretty much as you would expect. Curiously, the definition also includes an unrelated picture of Vegemite - click on that, and find fifteen definitions, some funnier than others, as well as the full text of the Vegemite song.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The trouble with Urban Dictionary is that I can't just stop at one word. I found this excellent term that I'm sure is bandied around the university regularly (or soon will be): 'wikidemia', used to describe 'an academic work passed off as scholarly yet researched entirely on Wikipedia'. Brilliant.

Dana said...

Sadly, I had not run across 'netonym' when I did that post, so it isn't in there. Whether I would have used it had I read the word is debatable, though -- you have to be careful with neologisms on a usability blog.