Wordplay: A geek's guide to origins

I’ve always had a fascination with history. There’s something about learning how something came to be that makes my skin break out in goosebumps, the way I imagine unearthing a long-lost tomb would feel to an archeologist or watching Star Wars Episodes I to III would to a Darth Vader fan. In short, digging up old stuff makes me geek out.

Words have the same effect on me, as well. I am lured by language, piqued by patois, attracted to alliteration, excited by etymology. So when I was asked to pour my interest in both history and words into one article, I immediately turned to the all-knowing Google to begin my research.

Now, one weekend later, I present to the public my finished work. There’s a bit of theorizing where necessary, I’ll admit, but the facts are there. I give you (drum roll, please…) a look beneath the surface of eight words and phrases that have crept and stayed in the Filipino’s daily lingo.

“Bahala Na Si Batman!”

It’s a phrase whose beginnings can be traced to the Filipino’s come-what-may attitude, and is analogous to that old Doris Day ditty, Que Sera Sera. “Bahala na si” translates as “leave it to,” suggesting that the speaker is giving up control of his or her fate to a higher power. As to why that higher power is Bruce Wayne’s alter ego we can only speculate, though one theory proposes that Batman was chosen as the best alternative to speaking the Lord’s name in vain because it adds a pleasing, alliterative quality to the expression (as opposed to, say, Superman or Lastikman).

“Bad Vibes”

The origin of the phrase as used in casual conversation today seems to stem from a New Age principle called The Law of Attraction, though its antonym expression, “good vibes,” is seen as early as 1966 (Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys). The Law, like the Hindu concept of Karma, states that the kind of energy — or vibrations, as it were — one sends out is also the kind one receives back. However, the expression has dropped from its lofty philosophical origins to the commonplace and covers negativity in even the most mundane eventualities, such as motoring conditions: “Na-BV ako sa traffic, pare (The traffic was bad vibes).”

“Anyare?”

Thanks to SMS and Internet chat, the need to limit conversation to a prescribed number of characters or to keep banter brief has given birth to whole new dialects that took on lives of their own as the early years of the millennium passed. While the jejemon culture is arguably the most enduring and widespread of these, at least in the Philippines, some words outside of its sphere have inserted themselves into the vernacular. “Anyare” (taken from “Anong nangyari,” or “What happened?”) is one of these, and is commonly applied to people and events that shock in a negative way. 

 “Fail.” (Or, In Catastrophic Events, “Epic Fail”)

Defined by UrbanDictionary.com as “the glorious lack of success,” the term’s come in handy for everything from Lebron James’ ringless fingers to Ke$ha’s fashion choices to the hacking of the supposedly “hack-proof” PlayStation Network within minutes of it going online. Some origin theories for the term point to the Japanese-to-English translation of the 1998 arcade game Blazing Star, which mocks the losing user: “You fail it! Your skill is not enough!” But general consensus has it that it was ultimately the website Failblog.org’s chronicling of humanity’s humiliation through photos and video that truly made “fail” a staple in our daily vocabulary.

“Conyo” / “Conio”

The original Spanish term, considered a curse word, refers to the female genitalia. Present-day Filipinos apply the expression to either a snobbish, wealthy person or to his or her speech patterns and mode of dress (heavy Taglish and the polo-shirt-plaid-shorts combo come to mind). Now we get technical: a case like this, where one word has distinct meanings in related languages, occurs when Community A borrows a word from Community B’s language and the word shifts in meaning over time, like in the case of asar (“roast” in Spanish, “annoy” in Tagalog). Linguists call the phenomenon “false friends.”

“Astig!”

Though the first use of the term itself is difficult to determine, astig is among the multitudinous offspring of the ‘70s trend of switching the first and last syllables of a Tagalog word to make it more colloquial (others include yosi, from the first and last syllable of sigarilyo, erap from pare, and erpat from a mutation of “father”). Its original form is tigas, which means hard or tough, and in everyday conversation refers to anyone or anything that, according to Tagaloglang.com, is cool, badass, kick-ass, or macho.

“Emo”

Believed to have originated in 1980s Washington D.C., the word was first used to describe the confessional style of music of the punk revolution. Today, “emo” is an adjective applied to anyone who appears to be a descendant of that hardcore generation or who conveys an air of suffering artistry about any subject. Many present-day emo kids also share some fashion peculiarities with Japanese anime subculture: dyed-black hair falling over the eyes, tight jeans, black nail polish, and copious amounts of eyeliner. Despite their appearance, however, they are a deeply sensitive folk, and the public is advised to treat them gently.

“Gimik”

Teens today casually throw the word around when talking about going out on weekends, as in “Saan gimik mo mamaya (Where are you headed tonight)?” But the term has a darker history: When Filipinos first adopted the American “gimmick,” it was used to refer to picking up women on the streets for sex. Thank goodness for teen drama, though, because it’s mostly due to the popularity of the ‘90s series Gimik — a local program modeled after Beverly Hills 90210, for those too young to remember — that the word was able to leave behind its sordid past and rise to a more positive role in the vernacular.