Just a thought: couldn't someone have come up with a more attractive name for blogs? I know it is a blend of "web log" but it is just ugly. I realize that lots of folks are already engaged in "blogging," but it just falls on the ear as crass, something like "nose picking." (In July 2006 the Pew Internet & American Life Project estimated that the US "blog population has grown to about 12 million American adults", some 8% of US adult internet users. The number of US blog readers was estimated as 57 million adults (39% of the US online population), although few of those people read widely or read often.)
In a world where new words are coined daily, see the Double-Tongued Dictionary, some very engaging words like spincerity and shack-wacky....couldn't we have come up with a better word than "blog?" It's handy as a single syllable, sure, and it can easily be converted into other forms due to its structure, but it's just so...blucky. Is there any word in English that starts with a "bl" that is a winner, outside of colors? Okay, and "blossom" ...and I guess "blink" is at least a palatable, if not a particularly colorful word.
Consider this list:
blimp, blight, blemish, blister, blood, blurry, blubber, bludgeon...and blog.
Unfortunately, there's likely no turning back time, no reinventing the image of blogging by changing its name, ephemizing it. I just don't particularly like saying, "I have a blog." It sounds like I'm admitting to some horrible disfigurement. "I read blogs," sounds like reading something into/from a belch.
I guess it could be worse. Check out what this very ugly word, "snog" means!
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