Sky's introduction of 'mob' into the lexicon

[Grotug]

The second one down on this search page dates back to January 27, 2020

https://www.doomworld.com/search/?q=...rch_and_or=and

This example isn't as strong as the 'romero on a stick' one but you can swap out 'mob' with 'monster' to get the meaning of the post; and check out the date, this one dates all the way back to October, 2015:


On 10/8/2015 at 12:09 AM, ArmouredBlood said:

For me, minimum 400 mobs (or 10+ cyberdemons), rocket launcher and/or bfg (sometimes plasma, though it's a little weak for multiple mid-tier mobs) are mainstays of the map, and situations where you must move constantly or near constantly to not get plastered with projectiles.

As far as that doom radio interview, I'll throw my hat out, though I haven't been too involved in doom the last year or two.

ArmouredBlood doesn't mean 400 groups of monsters, they mean 400 monsters. That's how mob's meaning makes the jump from 'a group of monsters' to 'monster's. But 'mob' here doesn't mean 'monsters' it means 'monster', because the modifier '400' is pluralizing the singular 'monster'. It's still talking about a group, but the meaning has changed from "a group of monsters" to mean just 'monster's (400 of them). Then people pick up on that slight change and go ahead and use 'mob' to mean an actual single monster (as we saw with Romero's head on a stick), since you can just swap out 'mob' with 'monster' in the sentence that ends "400 mobs." Very interesting evolution of the word mob. And simple enough for some rando like me to spot it!

[Grotug]

Here is another example of 'mob' being used in a similar way as ArmouredBlood:

Heretic Support - Solo Play - 3978788 bytes -
Reviewed by: The Ultimate DooMer published March 28, 2011
Protip: Health is needed to survive, especially on maps with 500+ mobs and big traps full of them with not much room to play in...consequently I had to restart this map partway through and scum save a lot in order to finish it. In fact it's so rare you'd think it was a powerup or something (there's very little of those too), and it does affect what is otherwise a fine map. It looks pretty good, has plenty of action and has some neat set-pieces too. It's worth playing, but you'll need a bit of luck with mob item drops and not take many hits to win.

https://www.doomworld.com/news/the-n...les-382-r4018/

This one dates all the way back to 2011. The second use of 'mob' is more closely evolved towards the singular monster meaning as single monsters drop items. (I mean, the traditional way this would be written would be: 'bit of luck with monster drops'.

Very interesting stuff.

[Grotug]

5 minutes ago, Gez said:
If we consider that "mob" is originally short for "mobile" in the sense that it's an actor that moves around, then Romero's head, being immobile, cannot be a mob. But since the term mob has long been generalized to apply to any sort of enemy NPC, then it still fits despite that (plus, you can make it move with dehacked anyway). Mobj is a more technical and Doom-specific term, so it's more obscure, while mob is part of the general video game lingo.

He also pointed out the Everquest origins... https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topi...omment=2419991

[EpicMan]

The use of 'mob' to mean "a singular monster" comes from MUDs (multi-user dungeons) back in the late seventies. It was short for "mobile" as MUD monsters and NOCs were (often) able to move around from room to room. From MUDs the term jumped to MMORPGs (the successor of MUDs) and then to General gamers' vocabulary so now it is used in most any video game genre

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_(video_games)

[Estie]

Solid research. Well done guys!

[kineahora]

Originally Posted by Grotug

When I learned that language is a living, moving thing, it sorta blew my mind. I used to always think of language as this static thing that got invented and then we wrote down the words with their definitions in a book, and that book was the last word on the language; dictionaries were the Bibles of language.

I think I learned that language is a "living", changing thing from a Linguistics class I took in college. It was actually more the way in which languages change that surprised me. It's not some governing body that decides what words mean, it's the general consensus among the people who use the words. Someone starts using a word in a different way than it had been used, and if enough people start using it in that way its meaning changes within the community, and if it is widely enough adopted to the point it is clearly the expected meaning by most people, then someone writes its new meaning down in the dictionary and puts the old meaning as the secondary meaning, and then when that meaning pretty much never applies anymore it gets the archaic tag.

So, to get back to the title of this post, how does it feel, Sky, to be the prognosticator of a new word meaning?

Over on www.Doomworld.com


When Sky started using 'mob' to mean a shortened form of the word 'monster', I was tempted to call him out for his 'misappropriation' of the word. But something gave me pause... I'm not sure, now, what it was; I think I was curious if people would adopt his re-using of the word or if someone else would call him out on his 'misappropriation' of the word 'mob'. While I've always been a little bit irked by his new use of the word, I had to admit it was kinda cool to witness live, in real time, on a forum no less, a word go through an evolution in meaning.

Just to make myself clear, what I'm trying to say is that 'mob' is normally understood to mean a group of angry people moving as a group (kinda like the mob that stormed the Capitol building). The really interesting part of all of this is that not only has no one protested Sky's new meaning for 'mob', but recently I've been seeing other people using 'mob' on this site in the same way that Sky uses it. Fascinating! I wonder if anyone else has also noticed these changes to 'mob' over the last year on this site?

Language is living, but some things are dumb :-)

Far as I'm concerned a mob is a group. The code sometimes creates a (singular) group of hounds. This is a mob and not really a single monster but a single *group* of monsters.

[ewert]

Originally Posted by EpicMan

The use of 'mob' to mean "a singular monster" comes from MUDs (multi-user dungeons) back in the late seventies. It was short for "mobile" as MUD monsters and NOCs were (often) able to move around from room to room. From MUDs the term jumped to MMORPGs (the successor of MUDs) and then to General gamers' vocabulary so now it is used in most any video game genre

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_(video_games)

Yea I was trying to remember if I ever remembered NOT using mob to mean also a single, err, well, mob. I started with MUDs in early/mid 90s. And I couldn't really remember ...

[Gwarl]

Sorry to break it to you but back when I used to play MUDs 15+ years ago we used to use the word 'mob' for 'monster', it's short for 'mobile' because mobs can chase you into different rooms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_(video_games)

Everquest was basically a MUD with graphics so this makes sense.

While I'm here, since someone mentioned doomworld let me just plug my releases;

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topi...00-on-idgames/

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topi...ap02-released/

Edit: oops I'm late I should have read the entire thread.

[Selkie]

Originally Posted by Gwarl

Edit: oops I'm late I should have read the entire thread.

Life is too short for reading entire threads. I say, get stuck in and say hell to duplication

[Grotug]

Thanks for the doom plugs, Gwarl! I will try to do an FDA of the first link as that looks very much up my alley.