Milves

About

Milves refers to the plural form of the noun 'MILF'. The term was first logged into Urban Dictionary as far back as August 2003 but saw spikes in attention and usage across Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit in May 2020 and May and August 2021.

Origin

On August 6th, 2003, Urban Dictionary user Teddu added the word, "milves," to the database, providing the definition, "plural of milfs" (shown below).^[1] The definition has received 960 likes since its posting.

Spread

Although the word was conceived as early as 2003, it wouldn't receive much meme usage until 2017. On August 3rd, 2017, Twitter user @PennMost would mention it in a tweet of his (shown below) that would receive 350 likes in 1 week.^[2]

What's the plural of MILF? Is it MILVES?

On Tumblr, the term 'milves' saw its earliest usage in July 2018 ^[3] and would receive resurging attention again in April 2019.^[4] In 2020, on May 10th, 2020, 'milves' would see repeated usage on Twitter.^[5][6] However, the most attention surfaced about the word in May 2021. In now deleted Tumblr posts, users @byrd ^[7] and @grimeclown ^[8] would exchange text posts about 'milves' and receive attention for it across Tumblr, but more notably, on Reddit. On May 20th, 2021, Redditor nonbinaryelf posted a screenshot (shown below) of the now deleted exchange between @byrd and @grimeclown to r/Tumblr.^[9] When put on Reddit, the screenshot gained roughly 9,000 upvotes in 3 months.

I feel like starting an INSUFFERABLE conversation / Is it ethical to thirst for Catholic milves / Completely disregarding the intent but did you just refer to multiple milfs as milves / Yeah like elves or wolves. It's how you conjugate it or whatever

Alluded by this Tumblr dialogue, 'milves' is an attempt to follow the same logic as the plural of 'elf' or 'dwarf', popularized by famous fiction writer J.R.R. Tolkien in his most notable books The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings. This is explained best by Twitter user @HitlerPuncher, who on December 19th, 2019, explained in a tweet way Tolkien insisted on the word 'dwarves' (shown below).^[13]

I have got to try to get these dishes done and go to bed, but here’s a last thought: Tolkien hated that the standard plural of dwarf in English was “dwarfs” so badly that he created multiple bestselling books that used “dwarves” instead and now most people use “dwarves.”

In August 2021, the term 'milves' saw an uptick in usage on Twitter mainly due to the app recommending a trending topic of 'MILFs' to multiple users for seemingly no good reason.^[10] This would lead Twitter users to humourlously correct the trending topic from 'MILFs' to 'milves'. This got the attention of Twitter user @DistractedAnna, who on August 22nd, 2021, wouldd tweet about seeing the word (shown below).^[11] This tweet would become the most liked to date, receiving roughly 8,700 likes over the course of 2 days. @DistractedAnna would reply to her own tweet stating the influence of the word to J.R.R. Tolkien.^[12]

Just saw Milf pluralized as milves, this is not okay.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References