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Urban dictionary: youth slanguage and the redefining of definition

What's up with meep and other words in the Urban Dictionary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2011

Rachel E. Smith
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Extract

In November 2009, Principal Thomas Murray banned the word meep from Danvers High School, located outside of Boston (Netter, 2009). Parents and students received automated e-mails and calls with a warning that saying or displaying the word meep would entail suspension. Students had ignored requests from teachers and administrators to stop, leading to the school-wide ban. This story contains entertaining elements: an overzealous principal who forwarded emails containing meep to the police; references to the meeping Muppet, Beaker; students sporting ‘FREE MEEP’ t-shirts; and Facebook-coordinated meepings. Referring to meep, Danvers High School student Mike Spiewak commented: ‘I think it's unfair that they banned a word that's not even a real word’ (Raz, 2009). According to Melanie Crane, another Danvers student, meep ‘doesn't mean anything in particular’ (Netter, 2009). As a result, its ambiguity allows for countless definitions. The authoritative source in defining the term throughout news coverage of the Danvers incident has been Urbandictionary.com, an online and open-source dictionary for slang and subculture terminology. For those of you who have never meeped, the primary Urban Dictionary (UD) entry deems it ‘the most versatile word in the English language [which] can mean whatever you want it to mean.’ UD lists 93 other definitions for the word, the most popular being.

Type
Original Article
Information
English Today , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 43 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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