Happy Friday, Horde! I come bearing procrastination.
It is currently 32C (apparently 90 in freedom units) in my corner of England, which may not seem like a particular lot until you realise that British homes were designed to capture all of the heat and carefully preserve it for future generations. You could say I’m a little OVER the weather (see what I did there? There’s no point in groaning, I’ll never stop).
While outside has been cancelled, I thought I would share a few of my favourite tiny internet rabbit holes for anyone who is joining me indoors.
Merriam-Webster Time Traveler
Pick a year. Any year! And Merriam-Webster will show you words whose first known use in print dates from that year.
Is it nerdy? Yes. Is it also Devouring Hordey? You bet your TBR!
I naturally started with my birth year, and then immediately got derailed clicking through all of them to check my linguistic assumptions. Tell you what, finding out I’m younger than the first record of the word assless feels destiny-defining somehow.
Please report back in the comments with the word that surprised you most, I want to know all the good ones.
School Myths
This website cheerfully informs us that “facts expire”, and then lists which pieces of our hard-won education have been debunked since we graduated (aka the adults LIED to us. I’m especially watching you, Mrs Sofronie who taught me biology. It’s on sight!)
You can, again, put in the year you graduated, or browse by subject if you don’t fancy surrendering your vintage to the internet.
For me it was the four-taste tongue map, the concept of learning styles, and quite a few spider facts which have apparently been quietly escorted from the premises. I fell into a research hole so deep I had to fight a Balrog on the way out.
Internet Artifacts
An interactive little museum of internet history, starting back in the primordial ooze (ARPANET) and wandering through things like the first spam email, the first emoticon, the beginning of memes and other assorted relics of the early web like the Ask Jeeves homepage.
This one is particularly dangerous if you are old enough to remember that connecting to the internet had a specific noise:
What are your favourite nerdy, fascinating, beautifully pointless corners of the internet? Share your rabbit holes with the Horde!
Artifact Friday!
Indy First! 😀
3
Dad jokes and food coma!
First?
I can give you second. But it’s Friday, so it’s a special second!
I can’t remember which college in the US puts this out every year. But at the start of every Fall Semester they publish a list to their professors (and the public) of what the incoming college freshmen did not grow up with.
Example – my nephews & sons did not know/interact with: VHS, TVs without a remote control, dial turn phones (duh) 4 digit local calling, etc.
If the BDH would like to do a Google search and break your brains on what you, your kids and grandkids (not there yet thank Goddess) missed out on in childhood – don’t break your brain! 🙂
http://themindsetlist.com/2025/08/the-unofficial-beloit-zeitgist-list-for-the-class-of-2029/
another version:
https://www.gawkerarchives.com/293287/the-mindset-of-the-class-of-2029
How about when there was a fight between BetaMax and VHS formats when VCRs were out in the electronic market? 😁
Oh, yes! Loved the BetaMax picture quality. I was crushed when VHS format won out. I so wish I had saved my tapes. Now I could have had them transferred to flash drive. I miss you, Call to Glory!
I had a Betamax. Until my then-two year old put a peanut butter sandwich where the tape went. And Betamaxes were EXPENSIVE.
YES!! I know that one! I am a college professor (anatomy & physiology, biology, pathology, etc) and I had so much fun with my incoming classes with this! I seem to remember it being University of Michigan, but here is a fun one: https://www.marist.edu/w/marist-news-the-first-marist-mindset-list-is-released
Teaching what I do to students going into health care, I use this as a means to remind them that their patients may not have the same reference points as do they. Ask many elderly (that age depends on yours, lol) to go online, fill out forms, then submit them, and they will nod politely and have no idea what you are talking about.
Anyway, such a fun point to bring up. Thank you!
I was born the year of the first use of: pissing contest and pimpmobile.
I don’t know what to do with that.
No, I totally get you. Like it feels important in some way, just not immediately actionable 😀
We must trust that there will be a time when it will come in handy!
hamster dance 🐹
What is fun is to look at the “Teachers lied to me” and go back and see how many of them are totally wrong, mostly wrong (tongue map) and “now has a different interpretation” (learning styles) The fact checking on these things is really bad. Some of this can be ascribed to new theories, but nobody has disproven the old theory. Some of it is simplification, teaching the theory of gravity is still a good idea, even though it has been disproven.
Newtonian gravity isn’t completely wrong. It’s an approximation that is “close enough” in many circumstances. You just have to understand what conditions it will work for.
I learned this way too long ago in physics.
I still find the concept of “domains of applicability” for a theory a very useful concept in many life situations!
(Yes, I’m a great big nerd.)
My comment is that if you look at some of these “my teacher lied” comments, some of them fall into this category. What was taught is not wrong, it is a “close enough” and sometime was already known to be an approximation.
Absolutely, it is works well enough till 90% of the speed of light, and I don’t go that fast normally 😉. I am an astronomer and we do far worse simplifications than Newtonian gravity!
codependent, cringeworthy, and recovering are my words!
whoops, this was supposed to be its own comment.
wait when did gravity stop existing???!!
I have literally never heard anyone at any time say that thunder causes lightning, listed as a 70s myth (therefore my vintage). Was that ever really a thing? Also my school quite clearly taught that life does not emerge spontaneously, as did any halfway decent school since something like 1845 (by the site’s own reckoning). So why is that one listed as a 1970s myth as well? A little editing might be in order there.
I find it “mind-boggling” that the term was birthed the same year I was in our dark adjectival past!!! Knowing that “Televangelists” emerged to the public at the same time I emerged from American Public Education system may keep me awake………
Murphy and I were born in the same year! No wonder we’re kindred spirits. I also got garam masala, tai chi, blast from the past, and hallucinogen. Interesting! Also interesting was there was a lot of research done on the components of blood that came out that year, leading to identification and naming of the components. Too cool!
How fascinating!! Thank you for sharing, I’m going to check these sites out!
I got “goofball” and “LSD”! Hmmmm! But, for some reason, “noseguard” was the one that really threw me!?!
I never tried it until now, but the Merriam-Webster Time Traveller is soooo addictive 😅
XKCD! Absolutely hilarious, and sometimes you learn something. In fact, sometimes you have to go to the Wikipedia pages for *explaining* XKCD in order to learn it!
Anime, boy band, Caller ID, F/X, latte, mix tape, and mood board?!
It’s so 19…19…1985.
I see what you did there. 😉🎶
Well, let’s see — (1) big bang theory, (2) carbon dating. (3) Brownie point if you can figure out the year. 🤔 Can’t look at “school myths”, I (4) plead the fifth on what year I graduated from high school. 🤦🏼♀️
+1 – earlier than they allow!
What was going on in my birth year?!?! The Mirriam Webster Time Traveller showed BDSM, cyber sex, man boob in 1991. 😳 Also LARP and trading card game. 😅 Like others said, I don’t know what to do with this knowledge. Mind-boggling yet…not? lol
I found “e-book” in the year 2000. Wow, how things have changed in publishing since then.
I am apparently as old as alternative rock, Texas Hold’em poker and fluoxetine (prozac). That last one may explain why major depressive disorder never appeared any earlier in print.
Hahaha! Schmoozy 🤷♀️
It seems wild that it wasn’t until my birth year (1989) that the word intersectionality was first used in print
Practical joke: 1776
Evidently, I am the same age as “diddly-squat”.
I already knew I was older than Whataburger, so what else could I expect?
+1 – another forty niner here. Scumbag, six-pack, Tex-Mex, and writer’s block.
I’m as old as dry hump and in joke. I didn’t make it past the i’ list
+1 – They do kind of go on, don’t they?!
loved this! fun! TYVM!
THEN: The times I was chided for reading in dim light! … Pluto lost status, and diamonds are not compressed coal.
NOW: Knitting in dim light is not advisable because you don’t notice your mistakes. Can we send Elon to Mars already? Diamonds can be made in labs so blood diamonds can be left unbought. (If you happen to be in the market for not-compressed-coal.)
I typed in my birth year to Merriam-Webster and got some eye opening words. Some of them are air hockey, anti-sodomy, beer pong, T cell receptor, anti-plaque, bipolar illness, and a lot more.
I’m with you Mod R with the hot weather. It doesn’t matter if it’s 90 degrees or 100 degrees, it’s just hot. I’m very glad we have air conditioning in the US. Please stay cool, Mod R.
Bibb lettuce?
AA battery?
Compassion Fatigue?
Ye gods –
Text messaging, video doorbell, post-traumatic stress disorder, and emergency medical technician all date to 1980. This dictionary thing is cool.
Hhmm, apparently, before I was born there was no such thing as “anxiety disorder” or “bad hair day.”
Do with it what you will.
Dystopian, Bioweapon, Body count, Goodness on the plus side Cabonara, Bananas Foster, Salsa and Peace nick. 1962. What a rabbit hole. So fun!
Brown Recluse Spider. Battered child syndrome.
Drinking coffee stunts your growth.
If you swallow it stays in your stomach and stops you up.
Eggs raise your cholesterol.
Dial up AOL, the screetchy bongity noise, followed by endless loading of the page. You could go make coffee and a sandwich and it would still be loading. Then if you clicked on a link it had to load all over again.
I really like Gutenberg.org for books in the public domain, lots of fascinating stuff. Some of Agatha Christie’s early work is old enough, I can’t be that old, dang.
Yep. The joys of landline phones back in the day.
Plus no one could call to the house, and no one could call from the house. 🤦♀️
Oh, thank you, ModR! Headfirst down ALL the rabbit holes!
+1
1952
Merry Widow, scuba, Alpha
Merry widow was used in Shakespeare, so I’d challenge that particular date.
They may be using it in the sense of lingerie.
automated
dust bunny
fish stick
spacefaring
UFO
and no baby said Papa before I was born, unreal! I have never felt so old.
No, no 😂. People certainly were using these words. The Time Traveler records them first being used in print in the English speaking world.
I’m as old as email!
Omg! Dial up didn’t end until 2025?!!
That’s a sound I do not miss in the slightest. Not to even mention how painfully slow it was.
Ahh, I feel very old now! “You’ve Got Mail” was actually exciting at one time. 😂
And to learn that the words “counterproductive” and “bar crawl” were first used the year I was born… well, that just added another wrinkle to my already questionable sense of age!
I’m as old as barf! 😄
Also chump change and nitpick. 1956
Well if it makes you feel any better if it doesn’t stop raining in my little corner of the north country of New York State (think almost Canada) I’m going to pull up Noah’s schematics! 😳😳
i live in england too, and while roasting I thought id give one of these ago then got the biggest heart attack of my life thinking ww3 started when I got the wildfire alarm notification thing 🥹
Oh No! Read your comment in the midst of the fun. Hoping you and your loved ones (pets in particular) stay SAFE!
Fire alarms and wildfires, floods in so many places make the humid Texas heat seem less overwhelming.
I couldn’t pick just one from time traveler:
Bubble butt
Helicopter parent
Janky
Caffeinate
Queso
Margherita Pizza
Puggle
I’m sure they all relate somehow, but my toddler has been hardcore toddlering and I cannot brain
Ty for the giggles Mod R ❤️
Wow…some pretty interesting new words came out of my birth year (1959)…though I contest one- wicca. Of course, they could just be sayin’ I’m old as dirt! LOL
I’m as old as Apgar scores and Lamaze, immunoassays and oral sex (pretty sure that particular concept is older than I am, however), micropublishing and NDAs, down and dirty, jerryrigged, and zonked.
Most surprisingly, I thought codswallop was a lot older than I am and farm to table a lot younger, but apparently we’re the same age.
Freedom Units! 🤣🤣
The Spam Haiku Archive gets my vote as nerdy, fascinating, and beautifully pointless.
These are so cool! Thank you for sharing!
I came in with the snow angels, frogmen, and graffiti. Who knew ’45 was such a good year?
condo, BASIC, graphic novel, garage sale 😃
IUD, gender identity, morning after pill
Go 1964 🎉
Spurious Correlations ( https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations ) is my all-time favourite. It is compulsory viewing if you want to understand the difference between correlation and causality,
This has been added to the list of things I didn’t know I needed in my life. Thanks! 😊
Alfredo Sauce. That is simply perfect.
The Wayback Machine! Where you can see visuals of things on the internet that look so dated you will feel even older than you already are. I love going there and searching for websites to see what they looked like 20+years ago. https://web.archive.org/
Hey ModR, is there an email or somewhere else I can message for an issue I’m not quite sure is technical?
Hi Theolessa, you can email me directly at modr@ilona-andrews.com 🙂
I’m apparently the same age as groupie and info graphic. And Acid Rock.
I miss Jeeves and was bummed when he was “retired” – sigh
I am English too, and also nearly had a heart attack yesterday! (Still better than Welsh folk, that got the alert in Welsh before the English version)
Also hiding inside without air-conditioning.
APOD pic of the day. Atlas Obscura! love these
Bumper sticker, circuitboard, long playing
How’s this for nerdy. The UK’s National Archives website has a historical currency converter where you can select a year from 1270, type in an amount (in £) and then see how much that amount would be worth in today’s* money. It’ll give you a breakdown of how much you could buy with that money in terms of horses, wool or manpower to give an idea of what it was really worth since absolute monetary value is a fluid thing but it’s still fun.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/
*2017 when the website was last updated. This is of course biased to British history so shouldn’t be seen as a global standard.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#currency-result
I am far too tickled that “cringeworthy” and “warp speed” and I share a birth year .
Sooooo….new words in 1963!!! Yes I am that old.
CALL WAITING & CALL FORWARDING…we had dial phones and a party line (that means multiple families used the same phone line & yes you could listen in to their conversations.) How could a call be forwarded???
Thanks, those are fascinating. I’ll toss in a site dedicated to odd/old words,
https://www.phrontistery.info/
Phrontistery is a term I chanced on, and found it has it’s own web site. Loving the word as I do, I’ve made myself a sign proclaiming my space to be “the Phrontistery at the Curmudgeon’s Lair”.
The voice of AOL’s “You’ve Got Mail” is from Ohio and was a ride share driver for a whike.
I woke up around 3am this morning to the very urgent thought of “is Shirley Temple still alive?? What ever happened to Shirley Temple?”
Then I was mildly preoccupied for several minutes thinking about whether or not it was worth it to roll over in bed, grab my phone, and read the biographical summary of Shirley Temple.
Then I thought about the fact that there was a time in my life where the option of finding out what happened to Shirley Temple just didn’t exist. I could have asked around, but the chances that anyone would know what happened to Shirley Temple when I asked would be quite low.
I never did look up what happened to Shirley Temple, but the point is that I can, and I can’t even decide if that’s a good thing or not.
beach read, biohazard, care and feeding, cozy up, deal-breaker, dork, focus group, game face, helpline, hippie, jet lag, megabyte, noncustodial, REM sleep, sleepover, suicide bomber, swap meet, wiped out, xerox, zit
Not sure how I see 1965 knowing this.
“Anxiety Disorder” was added in my birth year. I laughed, then sighed.
Wow! I’m as old as AAA, C4, code switch, fentanyl, and soul music!
One of my favorites is using Google Scholar. Just go to google and type scholar. you can then research truly accurate articles, papers etc and get the facts.
I was born in the year with angel dust to crystal meth to fuzzy logic. No wonder I am a mess 😄
98′ here, some words from my year: romantasy, dark web, side chick, c-suite, cosplayer
If I look up Internet Artifacts, I fear my name will be on it, as I predate it by ~40 years.
This is great!
School Myths:
An ice age is imminent due to global cooling
LOL
1952 “candidiasis” (yikes) and “fish stick”
my husband 1946 “sexual orientation” (huh!)
Thank you for the sites. Can’t wait to try School Myths. I always knew they were lying.
Ah, the old sounds of Internet dialup (not just AOL). 😂 How well I remember!
Well this is super fun. Thank you Mod R for giving me another rabbit hole to explore. I’ve only gotten a fat as my father’s and my birth years in the Merriam-Webster page.
It really gives you a good idea of what was going on in the world that year. For my dad, it was a lot of science and WW II. I got the AIDS epidemic and beginning of the internet.
What really surprised me , especially for my Dad’s year, was how many words seemed new and current, but we’re over 80 years old.
I think you’re corner of England (if thought you were in London) was slightly cooler by 4 degrees then my corner of London and I couldn’t hide away from the heat as I had outside surveys and meetings…I kid you not. I put my bag down and walked through the one sprinkler that was allowed on the cricket pitch as it was for a specific level of game, where as the rest of our site is crispy yellow. I’m with you in the over it and the house isn’t cooling yet as we head into the heady lows of 28 today. need rain so badly 😭
I’m going to go and check out the dictionary thing as my mind can free fall into that and not have to think about work.
happy weekend everyone
The last move has taken me out of London now 😉