Blogging Origins: Why We Say 'Blog'

The word "blog" is a shortened version of the word "weblog" which makes sense because blogs are simply articles or other text and media documents that get logged onto the web. But it all started with one person, Peter Merholz's curious fascination with words and word play. Here's the story.

"For What It's Worth, I've decided to pronounce the word "weblog" as wee'- blog. Or "blog" for short."

I didn't think much of it. I was just being silly, shifting the syllabic break one letter to the left. I started using the word in my posts, and some folks, when emailing me, would use it, too. I enjoyed it's crudeness, it's dissonance... As I wrote Keith Dawson after he added "blog" to Jargon Scout.

'Blog' would have likely died a forgotten death had it not been for one thing: In August of 1999, Pyra Labs released Blogger. And with that, the use of "blog" grew with the tool's success.

And it's been 20 years since the word was coined. It has invited many other word play to describe various types of blogs like the word "vlog" for videos. Only time will tell how things will evolve and what other terms we can coin to describe the stuff we do online.

-via Kottke

(Image credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters/Unsplash)