Every communication medium, from the telegraph to instant messaging, develops its own peculiar lingo. But the lingo of Twitter, the status-updating tool which has infected Internet hipsters, media types, and Hollywood, is ahistorically vile.

There's a simple algorithm for making up new Twitter words: Take an existing word and defile it by changing the initial consonant to "tw." Here are just a few examples:

• Twirting. Flirting on Twitter, an activity popularized by former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas.
• Tweeps. Twitter peeps, or friends. Seemingly intelligent people like Air America radio hostess Ana Marie Cox use this in an apparently unironic manner.
• Twisticuffs. A fight between Twitter users.

It just gets worse from there. But the single most horrible Twitter word is surely "twebinar," which is a Web seminar — "webinar" — conducted over Twitter. Twanks, but no twanks.

(Photoillustration via Maximum PC)

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