Meh.

Interesting. I never really tought to figure out where Meh came from. I figured it was always just an onomatopoeia like Duh or pssh.

It brings back a point that has been debated a lot on this site. At what point does a common part of speech become an internet meme?

Personally, whenever I’m indifferent to something I shrug my shoulders, lift my palms, and give an “eh.” Sometimes upon opening my mouth, the “eh” inherits an extra “m.” But, even if this is just a natural response at this point, I can’t say whether or not I learned this behavior from the internet.

Good call on submitting “meh.” Before confirming it, I think we’ll have to do some in depth reading up on non-verbal communication, and transcriptions of them (as you stated in the origin.)

Indeed, this is where it gets sorta tricky. I would count it as an internet meme from the standpoint that it is very frequently used in written form, particularly forums. In this respect it’s almost as common to see “meh” as “ROFL”, etc. Relatively few people SAY “meh” unless they’ve written it first, in my opinion.

On the other hand, that’s really where the criteria angle comes in: does an “official” internet meme have to either originate online or take new meaning online? If it merely “shows up” online does that count?

I’m usually of the opinion that simply appearing online doesn’t make something an internet meme.
But I also don’t think something ALWAYS must originate online.
Instead, I feel like widespread recognition of the meme must come from the Internet instead of other media or interactions in order to be classified as an Internet Meme.
So if “Meh” turns out to have gained widespread use BECAUSE OF the Internet, then Yes I would call it an internet meme.
But, if it turns out that “meh” was popularized IRL or by other media prior to widespread use online, then I would vote No.

If that is the case, I would say that the internet popularized it further than when The Simpsons said it. When you think of “meh”, you probably think of the internet more than the simpsons, although I cant say the same for other people.

Personally I never associated “Meh” with either the internet or the Simpsons. It always just seemed like a casual non-verbal utterance of disinterest or indifference; like a retort to “duh” and as an alternative to “psssh.”

Meh.
Seems like a meme bro.

If “meh” were accepted into the database, wouldn’t that set a standard for ALL internet popularized words to be added? Perhaps a general “LOLspeek” topic should be added, and this data could simply be merged.

We’ve toyed around with the idea of creating a glossary/dictionary early on that would compile lolspeak, chan-speak, 733t-h4x0r or whatever else we could think of, then decided that was way too big of an order to fill.

I’m thiking we ought to stay away from most vocab entries like this.

Meh.

wow. Two months ago I was really against the idea of vocab entries. Moving this back to Submissions.

i use this alot

There is no reason to include the Yiddish etymology in here. It seems a bit like “crying Wolof” to me. It’s only going to spread a false background for this word.

+1 deadpoool

Looking closer, I think Lidell is right. It looks like most people are familiar with this being popularized by the Simpsons, but being a Yiddish word.

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002716.php
http://ask.metafilter.com/18815/The-Origin-of-meh

And like Lindell said, if we add this to the database it will only further the misconceptions about the word. So it’s going back in the deadpool.