A recent survey awards Homer Simpson scholastic standing as the worlds most influential wordsmith since Shakespeare!
In an era of abbreviations and applications text is tiny and conversation compressed so it stands to reason our vocabulary would reflect this.
It appears we now prefer donuts to dictation and the noble bard has been bested by a beer drinking bald guy.
The survey on the which words from the The Simpsons have had an impact on the English language was based on answers from translators working around the world for a London-based translation agency.
The results were as follows:
37 per cent: “D’oh!” – a grunt expressing frustration at realising that things have gone wrong, or that one has just said or done something foolish.
13 per cent: “introubulate” – to get someone into trouble.
11 per cent “craptacular” – spectacularly crap.
10 per cent: “eat my shorts” – a dismissive insult.
9 per cent: “knowitallism” – describes Lisa Simpson’s personality.
7 per cent: “embiggen” – to enlarge or empower.
6 per cent: “meh” – an interjection, suggesting deep indifference.
4 per cent: “learning juice” – beer.
3 per cent: “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” – the French.
1 per cent: “kwyjibo” – word made up by Homer Simpson to win Scrabble game. Defined as “a big dumb balding Northern American ape with no chin”.
“Homer Simpson must be the most influential wordsmith since Shakespeare,” said Jurga Zilinskiene, head of Today Translations, which carried out the survey.
