美国国家公共电台 NPR 'OMG' Turns 100

 

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Finally today, news you can use if, say, you're going out to dinner with some particularly erudite friends and you want to impress them, especially if they are people who get annoyed when kids use terms like OMG. You might be surprised to hear that that abbreviation for, oh, my God, was not coined by a Millennial¹ or somebody texting or tweeting. Ben Zimmer, a linguist², wrote about this recently for The Wall Street Journal - the WSJ if you want to get jiggy with it. And he tells us that OMG has actually been around for 100 years. Ben Zimmer, WTF?

BEN ZIMMER: It's amazing to think about, but it's true. We're actually celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first known use of OMG to stand for, oh, my God.

MARTIN: So the first known use was where exactly? Tell us more.

ZIMMER: Well, amazingly enough, it was in a letter that was written to Winston Churchill on September 9, 1917, by a retired³ admiral of the British Navy named John Arbuthnot Fisher. And Lord Fisher sent this letter. He was already in his 70s at the time, retired from the Royal Navy. And he was complaining about Britain's naval⁴ strategy in World War I against Germany. And he was actually using it in a kind of a sarcastic⁵ way.

And at the end of his letter, he said, I hear that a new order of knighthood is on the tappy (ph) - that means on the table - OMG, oh, my God, shower it on the admiralty. So he used it as a sort of a playful way to suggest that this would be some new order of knighthood, but he just kind of invented it on the spot for that letter.

MARTIN: So was it used after that? Did you find any subsequent uses of it for - until recently?

ZIMMER: Well, no. You know, this was just a one-off thing. And nobody even knew about it until relatively⁶ recently. In 2011, a researcher for the Oxford⁷ English Dictionary turned up this letter when they were researching OMG. And they figured, well, you know, it's only been around since - what? - the '90s when people started using this kind of initialism that we associate now with tech speak and so forth⁸.

So this turned up. And, you know, it was used in 1917, but it didn't get picked up by anyone after that for a long time. Winston Churchill, upon receiving this letter, did not incorporate OMG into his rhetoric⁹. I think history would have been very different if Churchill had started using OMG and said, OMG, we shall fight on the beaches. But Churchill didn't pick up on it, and no one else did until the mid-1990s is when we start seeing it pop up again. It was sort of reinvented.

MARTIN: Can you imagine if Winston Churchill had put this into circulation before? Life-changing. Have you found any other funny stories or crazy stories behind abbreviations that you could tell us about?

ZIMMER: Well, you know, for the most part, this whole idea of sort of coming up with playful abbreviations, you know, goes back a long, long way. We just have to think about one of the most common words in the English language, OK, which actually dates all the way back to the late 1830s, when there was this fad¹⁰ for creating funny little abbreviations and using misspellings in the process. And so a Boston newspaper published OK as an abbreviation of all correct spelled in this funny way as O-L-L-K-O-R-R-E-C-T. So a misspelled phrase abbreviated¹¹ into OK became this very important part of the English language over the years.

MARTIN: I'm tempted¹² to say, well, OK.

(LAUGHTER)

ZIMMER: And OMG.

MARTIN: OMG. That is linguist Ben Zimmer speaking to us about his recent piece, "OMG Turns 100." Ben Zimmer, thank you so much for speaking with us.

ZIMMER: Thanks. It's a pleasure.

1 millennial   

一千年的，千福年的

参考例句：

• Both Russia and America looked to the future to fulfill their millennial expectations. 俄国和美国都把实现他们黄金时代的希望寄托于未来。
• The millennial generation is celebrating the global commons every day, apparently unmindful of Hardin's warning. 千禧一代显然对哈丁的警告不以为然，每天都在颂扬全球“公地”。

2 linguist   

n.语言学家；精通数种外国语言者

参考例句：

• I used to be a linguist till I become a writer.过去我是个语言学家，后来成了作家。
• Professor Cui has a high reputation as a linguist.崔教授作为语言学家名声很高。

3 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

4 naval   

adj.海军的，军舰的，船的

参考例句：

• He took part in a great naval battle.他参加了一次大海战。
• The harbour is an important naval base.该港是一个重要的海军基地。

5 sarcastic   

adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的

参考例句：

• I squashed him with a sarcastic remark.我说了一句讽刺的话把他给镇住了。
• She poked fun at people's shortcomings with sarcastic remarks.她冷嘲热讽地拿别人的缺点开玩笑。

6 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

7 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

8 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

9 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

10 fad   

n.时尚；一时流行的狂热；一时的爱好

参考例句：

• His interest in photography is only a passing fad.他对摄影的兴趣只是一时的爱好罢了。
• A hot business opportunity is based on a long-term trend not a short-lived fad.一个热门的商机指的是长期的趋势而非一时的流行。

11 abbreviated   

adj. 简短的，省略的 动词abbreviate的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He abbreviated so much that it was hard to understand his article. 他的文章缩写词使用太多，令人费解。
• The United States of America is commonly abbreviated to U.S.A.. 美利坚合众国常被缩略为U.S.A.。

12 tempted   

v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词）

参考例句：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。