We’re not trying to be something we’re not. At its best, Urban Dictionary crystallized that proficiency. Today, other digital portals—Twitter, Instagram, gossip blogs like Bossip and The Shade Room, even group texts on our smartphones—function as better incubators of language than Urban Dictionary. What was needed was an official archive for those evolving styles of communication. Early on, the beauty of the site was its deep insistence on showing how slang is socialized based on a range of factors: community, school, work.
The top definition for Urban Dictionary reads: "Supposed to [b]e a user-inputed dictionary for words. Learn more. How we casually convey meaning is a direct reflection of our geography, our networks, our worldviews. Urban Dictionary, now in its 20th year, is a digital repository that contains more than 8 million definitions and famously houses all manner of slang and cultural expressions. A lot has happened for the dumpster fire in the 10 years since Urban Dictionary first took a crack at defining it. We’re not trying to be Urban Dictionary,” he said.Later, he added: “If a word is used by some people, it should be in a dictionary for all people.”The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning.The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning.Share your feedback by emailing the author. See more. David breaks down how he constructed the Dothraki and Valyrian languages, and shows us what you need to think about when creating a language of your own. Learn more. Meaning definition, what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated; signification; import: the three meanings of a word. He wanted, in part, to help map the vastness of the human lexicon, in all its slippery, subjective glory (a message on the homepage of the site reads: "Urban Dictionary Is Written By You"). Review our Today, other digital portals—Twitter, Instagram, That's not to say Urban Dictionary is vacant any good, but its utility, as a window into different communities and local subcultures, as a tool that extends sharp and luminous insight, has been obscured by darker intentions. The internet still carried an air of innocence then; the lion's share of people who roamed chat forums and posted on LiveJournal had yet to adopt the mob instincts of My understanding of it hewed to a simple logic. The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries.The crowdsourced dictionary once felt like a pioneering tool of the early internet era.
Even those who operate on the site understand it for what it's eroded into. Back then, the most exciting, and sometimes most culture-defining, slang was being coined constantly, in real time. It is constantly reconfiguring and building anew. It transformed into a harbor for hate speech. The top definition for WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Urban Dictionary said otherwise. But there are some that have made the leap even faster. David J Peterson created Duolingo's High Valyrian course which you can find here: “It’s a very serious entry from Urban Dictionary, very well drafted,” said Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster, whichMerriam-Webster’s definition? “Initial coin offering” and “manspreading” are both new“That shows incredibly fast — you might say viral — spreading of the terms,” Sokolowski said.How did it spread? Through 2012, most of the articles about dumpster fires were easily about dumpsters that were on fire. Here was a place where words and phrases that friends, cousins, neighbors, and people I knew used with regularity found resonance and meaning. What began as a joke is no longer funny. Who knew that you were alowwed [sic]By 2010, Sports Twitter really loved the dumpster fire. When the word or phrase appears in, say, a news article with an explanation of its meaning, then it’s on the cusp.

It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. What the dictionary makers look for is what comes next, when the “writer presumes that the reader knows what it means.”In dictionary time, a decade is a really short span between first usage and a dictionary entry. Before Urban Dictionary, I'd never seen words like Urban Dictionary's abandonment of that edict afforded it a rebel spirit. dire definition: 1. very serious or extreme: 2. very bad: 3. very serious or extreme: . “My picks are turning into a nuclear waste and tire dumpster fire,” wrote one Twitter user, apparently disappointed by his fantasy team. By allowing anyone to post definitions (users can up or down vote their favorite ones) Peckham opened the door for the most insidious among us. What does drip mean? "A printed dictionary, which is updated rarely," Peckham In time, however, the site began to espouse the worst of the internet—Urban Dictionary became something much uglier than perhaps what Peckham set out to create. In fact, one of the site's definitions for When I first discovered Urban Dictionary around 2004, I considered it a public good. In Today, Urban Dictionary averages around 65 million visitors a month, according to In the beginning, Peckham's project was intended as a corrective. Another tweet reads: “the Kings, such a dumpster fire. The hip-hop blog HipHopDX claims that the word originates in the 2000s Atlanta rap scene while a 2018 Urban Dictionary entry argues it comes from early 2010s Jersey City, New Jersey slang. "In the early years of Urban Dictionary we tried to keep certain words out," Peckham But if the radiant array of terminology uploaded to the site was initially meant to function as a possibility of human speech, it is now mostly a repository of vile language. “An utterly calamitous or mismanaged situation or occurrence.”A lot has happened for the dumpster fire in the 10 years since Urban Dictionary first took a crack at defining it. Founded by Aaron Peckham in 1999—then a computer science major at Cal Poly—the site became notorious for allowing what sanctioned linguistic gatekeepers, such as the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster, would not: a plurality of voice.