Humblebrags

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Amy Wakefield. I’m calling from Deer River, New York.

Hi, Amy. Welcome.

Hey, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What you got on your mind?

Well, a few years ago, my daughter got off the phone with her friend, and I said, how’s your friend? And she said, well, she’s basically bragging by complaining.

And I knew exactly what she meant. And I think in this case, she was, you know, had a lot of college applications, and she was overwhelmed with, you know, good offers, and she just didn’t know what to do.

Oh, oh.

So my daughter was kind of set up with that.

Right.

Poor thing.

Yeah.

Oh, Harvard and Yale both want me. Whatever shall I do?

Right.

Exactly, exactly.

And my question was, is there a word for that?

There is a word for that.

Besides wanting to smack the person?

Right.

Irritating.

The word is humblebrag, and it’s actually a relatively recent coinage.

Humble plus brag.

Together is one word.

Like bah humble brag?

Well, humble is like you’re pretending to be humble, but you’re actually bragging.

I like it.

This has come up just this year in full force because there’s a Twitter hashtag called humble brag where when you see somebody who’s doing this in Twitter, that is, they pretend to be complaining, but they’re actually saying something that makes them look good.

Like, oh, I just hate waiting for my turn on the David Letterman show. It’s so tiresome back here in the green room.

Things like that.

Or this Oscar is so heavy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now where am I going to put this other Oscar? My mouth is already full. I don’t have room. I’m going to have to buy a new house, you know.

Oh, this diamond.

And so there’s a writer, a stand-up comedian named Harris Whittles.

Harris?

Harris Whittles is a stand-up comedian on the NBC show Parks and Recreation, and he’s a writer for the show.

And he created a Twitter feed called Humblebrag.

And all he does, or whoever runs the feed, is retweet these Humblebrags.

And there’s some great ones here.

Paris Hilton, this is one of her tweets. So annoying, the airline lost one of my suitcases. The one that had all my shoes in it.

You know?

Perfect.

Ariana Huffington. About to take off from Milan to Istanbul, and none of my three blackberries are working.

Oh.

Yeah, I feel the pain.

I’ve got a couple more for you, all right?

Ludacris, the hip-hop star. You fly in a private plane for special privileges only to find out that President Obama shut down DFW airport.

So now I have to fly to another one.

Oh, the humanity.

And these are what you’re talking about, right?

This is kind of what your daughter’s friend was doing.

Yeah, though it’s funny because to me, humble is a rather nice word.

Yeah.

I don’t know.

It doesn’t seem exactly the same as complaining, but it does capture the spirit.

But it’s definitely, you’re really bragging, but you’re trying to pass it off as a problem.

Right, yeah.

Maybe kvetch brag.

Kvetch brag.

I don’t know.

Humble brag has legs, though.

I don’t know if we’ll be able to wipe that one off the face of the earth.

I like it.

Maybe other folks have other words for it, maybe involving tiny violins or something.

Maybe we should put the word out.

That’s more of a hand gesture, I guess.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that’s certainly a great word.

You’re not completely convinced that that’s the one you want, though, right?

Well, I’ll have to think about it.

Okay.

It sounds good.

Yeah, see what your daughter says.

Okay, well, that might replace bragging by complaining in our family.

Humble brag.

I like it.

Well, Amy, thanks for calling.

Well, it was fun.

Thank you.

Thanks, Amy.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, what word has you puzzled?

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org. you