Language Log

The OED dates meh as an interjection back to 1992, in an internet newsgroup, and as an adjective back to 2007 in The Guardian:

The man could scarcely walk. Two hours later he was cheerfully high-kicking a suicide bomber out the back of a train. Nuts. But somehow it all seemed, to use a bit of internet parlance, a bit ‘meh’.

But this bit of "internet parlance" has started showing up in news headlines, without excuses or scare quotes, and not just in places like college papers.

[Update– For more on the origins and progress of meh, see "Meh-ness to society" (Ben Zimmer, 6/98/2006), "Awwa, meh, feh, heh" (Ben Zimmer, 2/16/2007),  "The 'meh' wars" (Ben Zimmer, 11/21/2008), "The 'meh' wars, part 2" (11/24/2008), "Meh again" (Arnold Zwicky, 12/1/2011), "Words for 'meh'" (Mark Liberman, 12/22/2011), "Three scenes in the life of 'meh'" (Ben Zimmer, 2/26/2012).]

Marie Solis, "When Did Everything Become So ‘Intentional’?", NYT 9/29/2025:

Dating, walking, working out, watching a movie at home, watching a movie in the theater, thrift shopping, grocery shopping, meal prepping, playing trivia, making coffee, drinking coffee, consuming alcohol, making friends, making plans with friends, playing the guitar, journaling, arguing, reading, thinking, scrolling, breathing.

You can just do all of these things. Or you can do them “intentionally,” as a growing chorus of lifestyle gurus, influencers and perhaps slightly overtherapized people you may know personally are preaching lately. […]

A close linguistic relative to mindfulness, living intentionally suggests being present and self-aware. Your words and actions are in near-perfect alignment. Possibly, you’ve meditated recently. True to its literal definition, being “intentional” also implies a series of deliberate choices.

I probably learn at least one or two new foreign words per day, and they always delight me no end.

The first new foreign word I learned today is Turkish kahvalti (lit., "before coffee) which means "breakfast".    

Inherited from Ottoman Turkish قهوه آلتی (ḳahve altı, “food taken before coffee; especially breakfast or lunch”), from قهوه (ḳahve) and آلت (alt), equivalent to kahve (“coffee”) +‎ alt (“under, lower, below”) +‎ -ı (possessive suffix), literally “under coffee”. (Wiktionary)

This tells us how important coffee is in Turkish life.

I've recently noticed two compound neologisms, both involving metaphors about foot-related self injury.

The first one was in an article in Medium on 6/27/2025, "Why Google is Betting 8 Years on a Programming Language That Doesn’t Exist Yet". That article explains that

In 2022, Google introduced Carbon, a potential successor to C++. Unlike Go or Rust, Carbon wasn’t ready for prime time. In fact, it was barely out of the conceptual phase.

And among the reasons given for the effort [emphasis added]:

C++ has steep learning curves and footguns.

The second foot-related compound was in a 7/24/2025 TPM article, "Why is Jeff Bezos rakestomping the Post?".

In a comment on "Alignment", Sniffnoy wrote:

At least as far as I'm aware, the application of "alignment" to AI comes from Eliezer Yudkowsky or at least someone in his circles. He used to speak of "friendly AI" and "unfriendly AI". However, the meaning of these terms was fairly different from the plain meaning, which confused people. So at some point he switched to talking about "aligned" or "unaligned" AI.

This is certainly true — see e.g. Yudkowsky's 2016 essay "The AI alignment problem: why it is hard, and where to start".

However, an (almost?) exactly parallel usage was established in the sociological literature, more than half a century earlier, as discussed in Randall Stokes and John Hewitt, "Aligning actions" (1976):

In today's email there was a message from AAAI 2026 that included a "Call for the Special Track on AI Alignment""

AAAI-26 is pleased to announce a special track focused on AI Alignment. This track recognizes that as we begin to build more and more capable AI systems, it becomes crucial to ensure that the goals and actions of such systems are aligned with human values. To accomplish this, we need to understand the risks of these systems and research methods to mitigate these risks. The track covers many different aspects of AI Alignment, including but not limited to the following topics:

Bibliographical cornucopia for linguists, part 1

Since we have such an abundance of interesting articles for this fortnight, I will divide the collection into two parts, and provide each entry with an abstract or paragraph length quotation.

Back in March, the AAAI ("Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence") published an "AAAI Presidential Panel Report on the Future of AI Research":

The AAAI 2025 presidential panel on the future of AI research aims to help all AI stakeholders navigate the recent significant transformations in AI capabilities, as well as AI research methodologies, environments, and communities. It includes 17 chapters, each covering one topic related to AI research, and sketching its history, current trends and open challenges. The study has been conducted by 25 AI researchers and supported by 15 additional contributors and 475 respondents to a community survey.

You can read the whole thing here — and you should, if you're interested in the topic.

More than 20 years ago, I posted about the explosion of -ome and -omic words in biology: "-ome is where the heart is", 10/27/2004. I listed more than 40 examples:

behaviourome, cellome, clinome, complexome, cryptome, crystallome, ctyome, degradome, enzymome,epigenome, epitome, expressome, fluxome, foldome, functome, glycome, immunome, ionome, interactome, kinome, ligandome, localizome, metallome, methylome, morphome, nucleome, ORFeome, parasitome, peptidome, phenome, phostatome, physiome, regulome, saccharome, secretome, signalome, systeome, toponome, toxicome, translatome, transportome, vaccinome, and variome.

Something for everyone

Coby L. wrote to ask why DOGE is pronounced with a final /ʒ/ rather than a final /dʒ/.

The Department Of Government Efficiency is clearly a backronym of the Doge meme, which references a Shiba Inu dog. According to Wikipedia, the meme can be pronounced /doʊʒ/ or /doʊdʒ/ or /doʊɡ/, though all I've heard from the media is /doʊʒ/. I guess Coby's experience is similar, hence the question. Wikipedia says that the memetic cryptocurrency Dogecoin is pronounced either /doʊʒkɔɪn/ or /doʊdʒkɔɪn/, but apparently not /doʊgkɔɪn/.

Spending some time in Ireland, I hear people saying "It's a soft day" or "It's a soft day, thank God!".  Not knowing what that expression implies, I do a search and find that "A soft day is what the Irish call a very very damp fog or a mizzle, which is a cross between a mist and a drizzle." (source)  Mizzle is also the color of a shade of paint. (source)

"Soft day" is a phrase derived from Irish lá bog (lit.) ("overcast day; light drizzle/mist").

That reaction to a moist, overcast day tells you something about the Irish mindset and helps you understand Irish sentiment and humor.