[Historical] Exdad and Lol

This is one of my favourite non-WoW posts from Udder Madness. Reposted here because I can.


September 6, 2008.
I have just been asked whether 'exdad' is a word that is legal for use in Scrabble. I do not think it is. Wikipedia does not know it. Google only knows it 1400 times. Therefore it is not a word. Arguably we can change this by creating it, using it in a niche that makes it completely indispensable to modern humanity, ..., profit (like how 'Muggle' is now in the OED). As such, I present 'exdad' (extremely distressing acronym destruction), which is a term used for acronyms that no longer accurately describe their subject (object).

A prime example of an exdad is the acronym 'lol'. Just to refresh everyone's memory, lol stands for "Laughing Out Loud" (and not "Lots Of Love", "Lay Of [the] Land", "Licentious Orgasm Laws", or simply the word "lol"). It is now used in various contexts, such as "just joking", "haha", "coincidence happens" and "I have no other comment to make". Lol. It has been overused to the point where it has produced the derivative "I lol'd IRL" (I laughed out loud in real life), which is a pretty lol statement if you think about it.

Does this actually bug me? Not at all. What does bug me is the fact that when I think about it, I realise how fucked up my language sometimes has gotten over the last few years. I tend to start a sentence where I make a point with "but yeah,...", I use "lol" a lot, I think "lol" a lot. And irl I must remember to lolirl, not just say "lol". Lol. I frequently type stuff like "lofl", and "loflk", and "loflkwtf?" (the insertion of a random 'f' into run-of-the-mill acronym makes stuff more lofl). And various other idiosyncrasies.

But yeah, one statement I do like is "just for lols" (or "just for luls"). That one sometimes makes me lolirl. Lul.

Final point, use the term 'exdad'. Please. Just for luls.