Notes from The Heart House

Brainy single-payer blog testing the waters on business, media, art and culture with the occasional critical theory slant.

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08/11/2009 • 1:54 PM

The Origin of FAIL

I’m pretty sure I came across the origin of FAIL this weekend. Yesterday I was helping a woman with her early 2000′s T-Mobile/Nokia Go-Phone, and when a mistakenly half-dialed number was attempted, “FAIL” shot back at me on the screen. Ouch. I felt it. A machine just gave me the smackdown!

Coincidentally, the NY Times printed this article over the weekend: “How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection.” It’s a nice tally on how the usage spread. Anyone else have any theories on the actual origin?

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Filed under: Culture and Counterculture, fail, language, words

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About the Author

Stella Tran graduated in the Liberal Arts with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Grinnell College and developed her professional experience in knowledge discovery and new media technology at Yahoo! Inc. (Read more.)