In this Adventure in Etymology, we’re looking into bloggery and other blog-related words.

As this week marks the 20th anniversary, or blogiversary of the Omniglot Blog, which I started on 26th March 2006, I thought I’d explore some blog-related words.

Bloggery is the act or practice of writing a blog, or blogging

The word blog [blɒɡ / blɔɡ / blɑɡ] comes from weblog, and was coined by Peter Merholz in 1999 on his blog Peterme.com, on which he used the phrase we blog. Not long after, others starting used blog as a noun and a verb.

The word blogger was coined in 1999 by Evan Williams of Pyra Labs, who produced a online content management system called Blogger to help people create blogs.

The word weblog was coined on 17th December 1997 by Jorn Barger, an American blogger, and combines web, as in wordwide web and log, as in a ship’s log (a written record of a ship’s navigation and speed) [source].

The world of blogs is apparently known as the blogoverse, the blogosphere, the blogdom or blogland.

Within the blogoverse there are many types of blog, including the blahgs (dull or uninteresting blogs), splogs (fake blogs full of link spam), a.k.a. flogs or spam blogs, and even metablogs (blogs about blogs) [source].

Blog-related words are collectively known as blogspeak or blargon (jargon of the blogosphere), and ever since I started this blog, I’ve kept my eyes and ears open for bloggable words and expressions to blog and/or blogcast about.

If you would like to support this podcast, you can make a donation via PayPal or Patreon, or contribute to Omniglot in other ways.

Radio Omniglot podcasts are brought to you in association with Blubrry Podcast Hosting, a great place to host your podcasts. Get your first month free with the promo code omniglot.

I also write about words, etymology and other language-related topics on the Omniglot Blog, and I explore etymological connections between Celtic languages on the Celtiadur blog.