teh

Posted on Sunday, Nov 7, 2004

Tonight asked what the whole “teh” thing was about.

For those of you who are wondering…here is the answer, courtesy of Wiki.

_Teh is a common typo for the. This misspelling of the most common word in the English language is so common that it is one of the words in the auto-correct lists of spell-checkers in popular word processing applications, such as Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect.

In the online slang known as leet, it is deliberately used in place of the word the. Here it is often spelt with a numeral 3 in place of the E, when simple “th3” is not used. For example, TEH or T3H are the traditional spellings of “the” when part of the phrase “PH33R T3H ____”. This is also used by many non-l33t Internet users or in a few Flash videos.

Teh can also be used as an intensifier, as in “he is teh lame”.

The intentional use of teh is especially characteristic of the writings of Jeff K., who likely popularized it. A common Jeff K.-esque usage of the word is teh in conjunction with a (misspelled) adjective to create a noun. For example, “TEH FUNNAY” refers to a thing that is funny or the general quality of funniness. This usage is commonly in all-caps (again in imitation of Jeff K.) but does not have to be.


comments powered by Disqus