At the risk of sounding like a) a prescriptivist, b) a grumpy old lady, or c) the annoying neighbor who wants the kids off her lawn, may I ask the following question:
What on earth is "I have feels?" "I have many feels?" "The feels are overwhelming me?" "Drowning in good feels?" Is this post-texting/post-Twitter usage? Because it cannot take that much effort to type out the -ing. (Or can it? Perhaps modern fingers are weakening under the strain of so much time spent on the computer.)
We now return to our regularly-scheduled formatting of Book Two.
Is this something the college kids are saying? Because I spend 40 hours a week with 14-17 year olds and I have never never never heard this one.
Posted by: Anastasia | September 08, 2012 at 05:47 PM
I've never heard it--I've only come across it online. So far. On Twitter, it was pointed out to me that it was originally "LOLspeak," but now it's maybe more of a Tumblrism?
Posted by: Miriam | September 08, 2012 at 08:28 PM
Many teenagers spell phonetically, but can't pronounce words right to start with (I know this from encountering 'quilty' for 'quality' when I was a teacher). So it could be that 'feels' is how they say 'feelings', swallowing the 'ings', and this has taken off as a shortened form for twitter. Sound plausible?
Posted by: Kerry | September 08, 2012 at 08:41 PM
I haven't heard that one, but I have noticed an odd fad lately for pluralizing adjectives and verbs. (One of my TAs last year liked to say "So many prouds!" when zi was pleased with a student's essay.) Perhaps we can just grit our teeth and hope that the fad blows over in a little while?
Posted by: Dr. Koshary | September 08, 2012 at 11:36 PM
What's annoying about not wanting your neighbours' kids on your lawn?
Posted by: Tom | September 09, 2012 at 08:25 AM
So annoying. I think it derives not from a desire to shorten words but from various internet memes based on humorously incorrect syntax and spelling ("I can haz cheezburger," etc.). For example, after an acquaintance made a silly grammar mistake on a Facebook post, she corrected herself and asserted that "English is many hards."
Posted by: AC | September 09, 2012 at 09:59 AM
I don't know the context of which you are complaining, but I do use that usage in one of my online discussion groups as a jokey thing.
Posted by: Bourgeois Nerd | September 09, 2012 at 09:01 PM
BN: Eh, my (mild) irritation is more about serious usage than joking around; I've got no objections to LOLspeak. As long as my students don't start writing about how "Wordsworth has many feels out in nature."
Posted by: Miriam | September 10, 2012 at 10:54 PM