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The Oxford English Dictionary Gang has once again named their “Word of the Year,” and this one is very near and dear to all of our hearts: GIF. Love that word. Use it in a sentence. “I GIFed, he GIFed, she GIFed, we GIFed.” Good sentence. From Wired:
“Like so many other relics of the 80s, it has never been trendier,” wrote lexicographer Katherine Martin in a blog post conveying the news. “GIF celebrated a lexical milestone in 2012, gaining traction as a verb, not just a noun. The GIF has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace.”
And the official definition from Oxford:
GIF, verb to create a GIF file of (an image or video sequence, especially relating to an event)
Congratulations to the English language. Better luck next year, “STAHP,” “unfollow,” and all the other great words!
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I reaed someone refer to it as “giffing”. I’m sorry but it’s a noun/verb – never a gerund. Gonna go make a gif, gonna go gif the shit out of that – yes. Gonna go giffing – no.
i go giffing every friday. trying to catch that one that best expresses my joy for the coming weekend whilst featuring either a) a person dancing ridiculously or b) a celebrity of some sort expressing happiness.
ugh!
Damnit, I can’t believe we lost out after all the campaigning we did to get Dourtney elected as the word of the year!
Dourt- more years! Dourt- more years!
Someone remind me, does this mean that #VforVgum has lost?
YOU BEST bet YOUR fucking KNOT, it does.
#OForOxford… oh who the hell I am kidding, no one from those days is around here anymore. We should make a GIF in their memory. They’d want it that way. They were pro-GIFs right? That’s how I remember it!
HEY, I’M still fucking HERE, buddy.
THAT’S RIGHT! You still HAVE AN American PATRIOT. You all STILL HAVE An AMERICAN Patriot!
Why is that? I have always wondered why such a huge percentage of people who used to comment on here a lot seem to have collectively vanished. Now I can only think of maybe 7 or 8 people who are still around from the days when WMOAT was still a thing (speaking of which, please bring back WMOAT). Does anyone know if theres an actual reason, or just a coincidence? (I am probably thinking about this way too much).
Well, Saturninan, sometimes people take the Internet a little too seriously. Sometimes that’s a good thing and they create something tangible out of the experience, but other times people just get angry and take it out on other people. Whatever it is, I think it is better explained in the form of this gif:
-Chris Trash, Internet Behaviorist
Personally I was hoping it was going to be year of the Blingee…
WHATEVER it means, it MEANS that I miss MANS.
I miss Werttrew and Notsewfast.
I lurked around the site during the great gif wars…there’s a lot of people from the before time, in the long, long ago that I miss too!
Wertrew and Notsewfast are gone? Welp, this half empty bottle of rum is going to be full empty tonight
Those sharpers had a word in the dictionary to begin with; “sourpuss.”
AWWWWW YEAH!
What is happening in that Krispy Kreme GIF?!?! It looks involuntary!!
He’s blazing Playback.
Gabe couldn’t have picked a better GIF!
GIF it to me, baby! Ay-ay, ay-ay!
1) The 80s are so 2002. The 90s are the thing now.
2) Is is already that time of year where we start naming “whatever of the year”?!
do you have any other suggestions as to how we must kill time before thanksgiving?
BUY CHRISTMAS gifts. Support THE economy. 24/7.
Researching elastic waistband technology in an effort to make your stretchy pants even stretchier.
The NPR lady pronounced it “jiff” like the peanut butter.
AKA how choosy moms choose to pronounce it.
Terry Gross would never do that!
No no, Melissa Block, I think? The ATC lady. I cringed but then thought, have I been wrong all along?
Wikipedia says thats fine:
The creators of the format pronounced GIF with a soft “G” /ˈdʒɪf/ as in “gin”. An alternative pronunciation uses a hard “G” /ˈɡɪf/ as in “graphics”, reflecting the expanded acronym. Both pronunciations are given as correct by the Oxford English Dictionary[3] and the American Heritage Dictionary.[4]
According to Steve Wilhite, the creator of the GIF format, the original pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand, Jif, and the employees of CompuServe would often say “Choosy developers choose GIF”, spoofing this brand’s television commercials.[5] This pronunciation was also identified by CompuServe in their documentation of a graphics display program called CompuShow.[5]
(I actually got into an ARGUMENT with someone about this last week.)
As long as it doesn’t close my throat like Jif does, I’m ok either way.
I’ve heard this argument, but it’s irrelevant because no one says it with a soft “g” anymore (or they shouldn’t). Even though a soft “g” is almost always followed by an “i” or and “e”.
gif as in good is the gangsta way to say it.
The Godfather uses gifs?
I wonder what Jiff McKagan will have to say about that!
I heard that too! And second guessed myself on the pronunciation because I thought that it’s really only a word you read on the internet and people don’t usually say it out loud.
But no. I’m sticking with ga-ga-gif.
I know how it’s supposed to be pronounced, in Internet-world anyway, and yet I always say, “Jiff-I mean, Gif, I mean, you know what I mean! The moving pictures thing!” .. Contrary to popular belief, I am not middle aged. I just can’t pronounce words.
I’m enjoying Oxford’s newly recognized word which is “omnishambles”. “Our tax code is in an omnishambles” (with the alternative being “Romneyshambles” obviously).
I am so happy Romney is a footnote in our history. So happy.
That word was invented on my favorite (British) television show, The Thick of It!
If only there were a word for “annual desperate attempt to seem relevant that actually reveals how out of touch you are by repeatedly introducing trendy technology words that nobody ever actually uses into your dictionary.”