Natalie McNeal, the author of The Frugalista Files, has alerted me this interesting Wikipedia entry. Its subject: the word teh. That's not a typo. To quote Wikipedia:
Teh is an English article based on a common misspelling of the. Originating from a common typographical error, this typo became a part of Internet slang and subsequently developed grammatical usages distinct from the.
"The spelling derived from a typographical mistake seen as the symptom of excitement," Wikipedia goes on to say, "much the same as the interjection of the numeral one between exclamation marks."
Teh is remarkably fluid. It can stand for an intensified version of the (e.g., "I am teh Editrix"). You can put teh in front of a verb to form what Wikipedia calls a "novel form of gerund" (though I'm not completely sure what that means), and you can put it in front of an adjective to (a) sound sarcastic and (b) give the adjective a superlative sheen (as in the title of this post).
I must say, I like teh, even though it's risen from misspelled text messages. It's the sarcasm it imparts that wins me over. It's not often you can reduce the number of words in a sentence, make an adjective superlative, and sling some sarcasm around by using just one little trick.
Now, I wonder if typing though instead of thought, or vice versa, will turn out to be the springboard for even more snarky slang someday.
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