Blog Blog Blog
August 26th, 2006The word blog was the Word of the Year in 2004, so it hasn’t really been with us that long. Yet already it has spawned many progeny, including blogger, blogosphere, blogerati, vlog, and a long parade of other creations that speakers have coined for their own specific purposes. It has penetrated the language so far that its origins are fading fast in our memories. This first blogpost reconstructs the etymology, or word origin and history, of the word blog for posterity.
Blog started out as the noun weblog, compounded from web (itself a clipping of World Wide Web) and log, a kind of record of computer events (as in the ubiquitous log files that running programs generate). Blog was an unusual and rather creative clipping. It was unusual because it did not follow the usual pattern of snipping a piece off at any natural linguistic boundary (such as the syllable boundary between web and log); instead the word contains pieces of what were originally two different syllables. It was creative because of the ‘fun’ sound of the resulting word: It has both initial bl-, vaguely suggesting words like blip, blooper, blimp, and blah-blah-blah, and final -og as in clog, snog, and frog.
The result is an unusual sounding word, with the infrequent sound combinations and short form often associated with popular slang words. Furthermore blog is very often used as a verb, which further disguises its origins. (One creates a blog by blogging.) The noun weblog is fast disappearing from use, and as it does, the interesting origins of blog will someday probably appear in some future etymology game to tease word-lovers. It all goes to show how a new word can pop up practically overnight and take off like a rocket, leaving its traces in many other words and yet leave little or no signs of its origins.