Who taught: Andrew, Pat and Jean

n00b (source: dayumdana.tumblr.com)

It is amazing to see that almost all of the languages keep evolving. A few days ago, I was watching “Everybody Loves Raymond” with Jessy and heard a new expression I have never heard of, schmuck. An old guy told that Raymond is a schmuck. Do you know what it is? It is basically a jerk, idiot or moron. When I heard it, for some reason, I thought it is kind of an old expression. Why? I think, during the last 4 years and 2 months in the U.S., I have never heard of that one from any of my American friends. Am I right, my friends?

But, I have heard some other expressions that a lot of people use these days. In fact, I used them about a week ago to Andrew. I assume many of you have a facebook account, right? I also do have. If you search for “Terry Lee”, you might be able to find me on facebook. Anyways, a few days ago, Andrew wrote on his status, “I just found out that my iPhone headphones have a built-in microphone.” As soon as I read that one, I was like, “Oh, Andrew! You gotta be kidding me! How could you not notice it?” and added a comment, “You are such a newbie!” Newbie is a term that have been used by a lot of gamers first. When there is a new person comes into an online game, they say “Hey, here comes a newbie!” And, people started to use the term to describe any person who is new at something. For instance, if I go to a tennis court to try it out with bunch of friends who are already good at it, I can say to them, “Hey Guys! I am a newbie here. You gotta serve slowly.” There is a short version for this. It is “newb.”

Following my comment, Jean added another comment saying, “No, no, T-bone, like this: You are such a nOOb!” When I first heard this expression from Pat, I thought it is the same thing as newbie. Well, as you can imagine, it is not the same thing at all. Thus, you should be careful when you use this one because it has the same meaning as “Schmuck.” Here is the definition I found on urban dictionary.

A n00b or nOOb is someone that lacks intellegance or common sense, most people think that noob is a word used only in the online gaming world, but in reality it is becoming an ever popular word.

Maybe you would not want to use nOOb one too often or to someone whom you do not know well. Furthermore, since newb and nOOb sound very similar if you do not pronounce correctly, you might want to use newbie when you mean to say newbie to other people. Most of the times, you would find yourself speaking the word in this type of sentence, “Man! You are such a newbie!” or “Dude! You are such a nOOb!”

P.S.: Schmuck also means penis. Be careful to use this word too! Or maybe, try to pay attention closely to find out the context when someone uses this word in conversations. 🙂