Oh, the irony: 'Twitter' used to be whaling slang

But did it Twitter?

Whenever Twitter's servers take a tumble--which, longtime users undoubtedly recall, used to be pretty frequently--the microblogging service brings up an image of a whale being lifted out of the water by a flock of birds. The creation of designer Yiying Lu, the "fail whale" has become pretty much iconic among Web geeks.

But the official blog of the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Mass., has informed us all that the word "twitter" was associated with whales long before Evan Williams and Biz Stone were dealing with customer complaints, sort of like how "muggles" was pothead slang decades before "Harry Potter" came along.

"Twitter," believe it or not, once referred to an obscure piece of sperm whale anatomy that was typically only encountered when whalers were chopping up one of the unfortunate creatures.

The Whaling Museum dug up an old document called "Report of the Commissioner for the year ending June 30, 1902: Aquatic products in arts and industries: fish oils, fats, and waxes. Fertilizer from aquatic products," which we assume must've been absolutely fascinating reading. On page 197, the term "twitter" is explained (in way more than 140 characters): it's a "thread-like or membranous substance ranging through the contents of the case...from 2 to 3 inches thick, glutinous, and extremely tough" in the head of a sperm whale. You know, like Moby Dick.

The document continues: "In decapitating the sperm whale, especially in severing near the bunch of the neck, a very sharp spade is required to cut through this tough and elastic formation. Although it is very difficult to manipulate, an economical whaleman never throws this substance away." Um, that sounds kind of horrible and gross. I'll take the more recent definition of "twitter" any day.

(NB: I stumbled upon this thanks to a link from a Twitter account that claims to be written by the massive whale hanging on the ceiling of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.)

[Thad Boyd]

In what way is that ironic, exactly?

That's not irony.

[byrneseyeview]

Because of the "fail whale". Whales are central to Twitter culture; the word "twitter" comes from whaling culture.

Incidentally, it would take 8981 tweets to retweet Moby Dick, or more if you took breaks for spaces. If Melville didn't have unlimited texting, it's pretty obvious why he died broke.

[gregmar]

Odd maybe, irony - no. Less obscure twitter is "the sounds made by certain birds." http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/twitter

That could be irony.

[Demersal]

I think it's likely that electronic twittering was deliberately named after the sounds of small songbirds i.e. ubiquitous, random, and meaningless or ridiculous to others. But oh so important to the sender!

[CraigeMoore]

Caroline, am I missing where you have a link on this article to follow you on Twitter? It's got to be here somewhere! On a story about Twitter! ... Right?

[caroline.mccarthy]

You can follow me at twitter.com/caro :)

[therecanbeonlyonechuckles]

Merri-Webster defines irony as (summarizing): 1: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning, 2 the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning, or 3 incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.

You can consider this to be ironic according to the 3rd definition.

[mikeburek]

Glad that whale is still Twittering.

[EcoSurfer]

Maybe the "Irony" would be that the word "Twitter" that came from a whaling term in 1902 and is now used in 2009 to describe a social network .......could also take it's place in the dictionary as a "word" that described how a social network "Twitter" led to the end of commercial whaling once and for all.

"Twitter"...1.a social network that was instrumental in ending commercial whaling 2. a movement

[JBSheppard]

No matter how you slice it, Twitter was a poor choice of name for a supposed "co-ed" social networking site since society defines Twitter as birds chirping. I don't personally know of any male that wants to be viewed as: chirping like a bird....

[Xade_not_perfect]

I do not...twitter! The name of it is what make me not want to use the service, twitter = twittering birds. That, plus the incredible amount of inane babble.