lolspeak

English

Alternative forms

• LOLspeak

Etymology

lol +‎ -speak

Noun

lolspeak (uncountable)

1. (Internet slang, neologism) The speech of lolcats, consisting of spelling variations of English, imitating the speech of children and some regional accents.
   • 2007, David DeLaney, “Re: As Others See Us, in this case the DHS”, in rec.arts.sf.written‎ (Usenet):

     The standards are still being fract^H^H^H^H^Hwritten for the language, but the availability of Suitable Wordings from lolspeak verges on the frightening at times.

   • 2009, Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, Edward Loper, chapter 3, in Natural Language Processing with Python‎, →ISBN, page 127:

     Study the lolcat version of the book of Genesis, accessible as nltk.corpus.genesis.words('lolcat.txt'), and the rules for converting text into lolspeak at http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=How_to_speak_lolcat. Define regular expressions to convert English words into corresponding lolspeak words.

   • 2010, Martin Grondin, LOLcat Bible: In Teh Beginnin Ceiling Cat Maded Teh Skiez An Da Urfs N Stuffs‎, →ISBN:

     Now, in this first ever feline gospel, they retell 50 popular Bible stories in LOLspeak.

   • 2011, Lauren Gawne, Jill Vaughan, “I can haz language play: The construction of language and identity in LOLspeak”, in M. Ponsonnet, L. Dao, M. Bowler, editors, Proceedings of the 42nd Australian Linguistic Society Conference‎, →ISBN:

     Of course, for every feature of LOLspeak we discuss, it is likely that you will find numerous counter examples, as such is the nature of language play. LOLspeak is nothing if not creative.

2. (Internet slang) Internet slang, often through initialisms such as those associated with the word lol.

Synonyms

• (speech of lolcats): lolcat

Related terms

• chatspeak
• leetspeak
• textspeak