Sky's introduction of 'mob' into the lexicon

[kineahora]

When I learned that language is a living, moving thing, it sorta blew my mind. I used to always think of language as this static thing that got invented and then we wrote down the words with their definitions in a book, and that book was the last word on the language; dictionaries were the Bibles of language.

I think I learned that language is a "living", changing thing from a Linguistics class I took in college. It was actually more the way in which languages change that surprised me. It's not some governing body that decides what words mean, it's the general consensus among the people who use the words. Someone starts using a word in a different way than it had been used, and if enough people start using it in that way its meaning changes within the community, and if it is widely enough adopted to the point it is clearly the expected meaning by most people, then someone writes its new meaning down in the dictionary and puts the old meaning as the secondary meaning, and then when that meaning pretty much never applies anymore it gets the archaic tag.

So, to get back to the title of this post, how does it feel, Sky, to be the prognosticator of a new word meaning?

Over on www.Doomworld.com


When Sky started using 'mob' to mean a shortened form of the word 'monster', I was tempted to call him out for his 'misappropriation' of the word. But something gave me pause... I'm not sure, now, what it was; I think I was curious if people would adopt his re-using of the word or if someone else would call him out on his 'misappropriation' of the word 'mob'. While I've always been a little bit irked by his new use of the word, I had to admit it was kinda cool to witness live, in real time, on a forum no less, a word go through an evolution in meaning.

Just to make myself clear, what I'm trying to say is that 'mob' is normally understood to mean a group of angry people moving as a group (kinda like the mob that stormed the Capitol building). The really interesting part of all of this is that not only has no one protested Sky's new meaning for 'mob', but recently I've been seeing other people using 'mob' on this site in the same way that Sky uses it. Fascinating! I wonder if anyone else has also noticed these changes to 'mob' over the last year on this site?

Language is living, but some things are dumb :-)

Far as I'm concerned a mob is a group. The code sometimes creates a (singular) group of hounds. This is a mob and not really a single monster but a single *group* of monsters.

[ewert]

The use of 'mob' to mean "a singular monster" comes from MUDs (multi-user dungeons) back in the late seventies. It was short for "mobile" as MUD monsters and NOCs were (often) able to move around from room to room. From MUDs the term jumped to MMORPGs (the successor of MUDs) and then to General gamers' vocabulary so now it is used in most any video game genre

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_(video_games)

Yea I was trying to remember if I ever remembered NOT using mob to mean also a single, err, well, mob. I started with MUDs in early/mid 90s. And I couldn't really remember ...

[Gwarl]

Sorry to break it to you but back when I used to play MUDs 15+ years ago we used to use the word 'mob' for 'monster', it's short for 'mobile' because mobs can chase you into different rooms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_(video_games)

Everquest was basically a MUD with graphics so this makes sense.

While I'm here, since someone mentioned doomworld let me just plug my releases;

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/120701-hell-keep-redux-v100-on-idgames/

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/122483-dread-moon-map02-released/

Edit: oops I'm late I should have read the entire thread.

[Selkie]

Edit: oops I'm late I should have read the entire thread.

Life is too short for reading entire threads. I say, get stuck in and say hell to duplication

[Grotug]

Thanks for the doom plugs, Gwarl! I will try to do an FDA of the first link as that looks very much up my alley.

[Huqhox]

I noticed the gradual uptake of 'mob' for a singular inhabitant on the forum and then have adopted it myself. I find 'monster' a very negative word, after all not all the mobs in the game are monstrous by any means.

From a technical background it also fits pleasingly into terms such as blob or glob where the 'ob' is just short for 'object'. So it could refer to 'monster object' which is essentially how mobs are represented in the code

Bottom line, I like it

[Pete Mack]

So... what is the term for an actual mob (plural)?

[Julian]

So... what is the term for an actual mob (plural)?

A monster of mobs, clearly

[kineahora]

So... what is the term for an actual mob (plural)?

Choose another synonym that hasn't already been coopted for silly confusing jargon--like maybe "gang" or "bevy" :-)

[wobbly]

Clearly the plural is a mob of mobs.

[Hounded]

Might I propose "gaggle"?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

When it's a "murder" of crows,
an "unkindness" of ravens,
a "boil" of hawks,
a "cast" of falcons,
a "colony" of vultures, and
a "convocation" of eagles.

"mob" just doesn't evoke much.

[Pete Mack]

Ingwe--
I had assumed a mob was a group of unrelated monsters, say from out of a diagonal vault. I used "pack" for related ones, like wolves and hounds.

[tangar]

In Russian slang language we use 'mob' word for past 20 years to call monsters in MMORPG games

[Estie]

a "mob" of mobs ?