In a video posted to TikTok on April 3, the Harvard linguistics graduate explained how video game slang has permeated the cultural lexicon.
Adam Alexic, also known as an etymology geek on social media, posted a video explaining how video game terms are used in everyday conversation.
In the film, Alexic explains how popular sports terminology was adopted into common metaphors after a particular sport became popular and part of shared cultural knowledge. Masu. He said phrases like “on deck,” “swing and miss,” and “out of left” come from baseball and originally meant one thing but now mean something else. He points out that it is used like this.
He predicts that as video games become a larger part of shared cultural knowledge, the common terms associated with them will eventually take on more serious meaning. Credit: @etymologynerd (via Storyful)
video transcript
I've noticed that Gen Z tends to use video game terminology more and more in real life. You can also call someone an NPC or take part in a side quest. And we've certainly heard people say, where do we drop it, I mean, where do we go? But what's really interesting about this is that this is a whole new etymological category based on our shared video game experience. It's like a sports metaphor that we've developed over time. This may sound like a sudden phrase, but there is a phrase like this: On deck, swing and miss, and left out, all have different meanings but are based on common cultural knowledge about baseball. But now we're in a whole new ball game of people sharing their cultural knowledge about video games. So we started using it as a way to express reality.
And research shows that societies always create metaphors from common traditions. Because that's how people understand each other best. Whether it's the word NPC or the phrase swing and miss, these terms rely on a cultural foundation of shared ritual. For example, chess was once much more culturally important. It was like a video game from the 12th to 15th century. So we started using chess terms like pawn and gambit to describe non-chess situations. And the word check evolved from a literal attack on the king to a more figurative meaning of stopping and examining something. That's why we check and investigate things today.
And words like noob, nerf, and op, while mostly ironic when used offline today, would eventually take on more serious meanings, like sports and chess metaphors. . And no one knows what they will be like in 100 years.
