''Teh'' is an
Internet slang
Internet slang (also called Internet shorthand, cyber-slang, netspeak, digispeak or chatspeak) is a non-standard or unofficial form of language used by people on the Internet to communicate to one another. An example of Internet slang is " LOL" ...
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
most frequently used as an English
article (grammar), article, based on a common
typographical error
A typographical error (often shortened to typo), also called a misprint, is a mistake (such as a spelling mistake) made in the typing of printed (or electronic) material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual type-setting (typography). ...
of "''
the".'' ''Teh'' has subsequently developed
grammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...
usages distinct from ''the''.
It is not common in spoken or written English outside technical or
leet
Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance ...
speak circles, but when spoken, it is pronounced , , or .
Usage
''Teh'' originates from the common
typo
A typographical error (often shortened to typo), also called a misprint, is a mistake (such as a spelling mistake) made in the typing of printed (or electronic) material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual type-setting (typography). ...
of ''the'', as might both occur and remain uncorrected when a person was typing rapidly prior to the widespread availability of
autocorrect helper applications, and has become conventionalized in a variety of contexts.
In addition, it is a standard feature of leetspeak
and can be used ironically
or to mock someone's lack of "
techie" knowledge or skills, as an insult, or to reinforce a group's elitism;
cf.
eye dialect.
References
External links
*
Internet slang
Leet
Nonstandard spelling
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