Eliminate cop-out flaws and bad characterization!

I think part of the issue here is a failure to properly define "snark". kashchei, what would you consider an example?

the definition of snark my argument is based on, is quick sarcasm and witty comebacks and one-liners. Banter would fall under my definition of snark.

edited 28th Nov '11 10:27:37 PM by NoirGrimoir

Snark (n) - snide remark
Snide (adj) - derogatory in a nasty, insinuating manner

I mainly differentiate it from other forms of sarcasm by how obvious and unsubtle it is about its malice or denigration. With regular sarcasm, you could construe the person as being serious; with snark, not so much. I admit to a personal bias, however, in which "snark" doubles as witless or inept sarcasm.

Example of snark:

Example of not-snark:

edited 28th Nov '11 10:37:07 PM by kashchei

I think this is the basic cause of your argument, then - if your definition of snark requires that it be malicious, then that is pretty much entirely a negative trait, while someone like Noir Grimoir disagrees because she defines snark in a fashion that can include good-spirited humor as well as snide insults.

Frankly, I don't know which is actually correct, as the only place I see "snark" used to refer to anything besides Lewis Carroll is on the web, where it is a fairly meaningless term. But my point is that this really seems to be a matter of personal dictionary differences, not a real argument on whether "snark" is good or bad.

I think someone always has to assume 'snark' means the broader definition since a lot of people do use it that way, unless specifically defined. Regardless of any dictionary definition, in common language it is often used to mean the broad definition.

I think my example holds — the only difference is the context, and Gimli initially takes it literally anyway.

Except that kashchei is right that "snide", at least, does imply mean-spiritedness.

But nobody said 'snide', they said 'snark'.

kashchei defined "snark" as "snide remark" - that might even be the real linguistic origin, come to think of it - and concluded that under that definition, good-natured banter like Legolas to Gimli in that example would not actually qualify.

But I'd say that is not the way it is used in actual conversation at least 70% of the time (numbers coming out of my ass, but the fact that about four people on this thread thought of it in that way as opposed to one, maybe one and a half thinking of it as referring exclusively to the 'snide remark', rather supports it.)

But whatever, doesn't matter, we know what each other means now.

I think denigrating the height of a companion counts. The context is of friendship, which of course means Legolas doesn't care about Gimli's height nor considers it a point of denigration in particular. At the same time, it's a play on racial tension.

Would the same phrase be a snark in context of someone less well-humoured than Gimli?

IMO It doesn't matter so much how well the person takes it as it does the intentions behind it by the snarker.

edited 29th Nov '11 4:05:20 AM by NoirGrimoir

(Thread hop) Personally I dislike this entire mentality of consciously writing flaws into your characters. As if there is a survey you need to fill and certain amounts of points you need to balance out, thus you have to tick some positive traits and some negative traits. Clearly this could be helpful if you tend to write Nothing but Mary Sue's but in other cases it seems like a really contrived way to write a character.

I propose to write people first and filling in such surveys later. I guess I also don't like it when the narration or text itself is not morally neutral in terms of the characters it is describing. (This does not apply if the narration is not an omniscient narrator, rather a person telling a tale, of course.) The readers themselves have got judgement - they can judge if they perceive a certain trait as a flaw or not, the narration itself does not need, in my opinion, to solidify this.

edited 29th Nov '11 4:39:18 AM by Yachar

If I do a Google search on "irregardless," I get about 1,770,000 results; doesn't make it a word. I'm all for descriptivism, but words meaning whatever the fuck you want them to mean defeats the purpose of language.

Snark is specifically not banter, because it is meant to characterize a single person's way of speech.

A dictionary isn't the be-all-end-all of word definitions. People used 'ain't' long before it was in a dictionary and now it is. Was it somehow not a word before? A dictionary is a reference to definition standards but standards, especially in something as extensive, fluid and dynamic as language, change all the time, no dictionary could possibly keep up, and that's why they release new ones every year. Words are for communication, if a given word is understood by a group of people to mean something and used for that meaning, than it is a word, regardless of whether it is ever written down anywhere. It's out there functioning as a word. Besides, by your definition, 'snark' isn't a word. You'll notice it's not in the dictionary (I just checked), so we shouldn't even be having this conversation.

And my definition isn't arbitrary. Pretty much you were the only person in this entire thread who was operating under the definition you claim it has. So in functional usage it doesn't appear to actually have that narrow definition. Perhaps you should be reexamining your definition.

In other words, I should ignore the etymology of a word because enough people have butchered the word's definition? If we were talking about something more commonly used, I would have no problem with the connotation trumping the denotation, but since we aren't, I don't really think that four people's ignorance of a word's origin means that the original meaning has been lost.

As for the first part of that post, I'd dearly love to know why you'd spent a paragraph arguing in circles about dictionaries and their merit when I never brought them up in the first place.

Entering "pedant mode"...

Actually, if we are going by etymology, the word "snark" comes from the Low German snarken, meaning "to snore" or "to snort." The original definition was thus, though with the added implication of doing so derisively. In transference, "to snark" soon came to mean "to find fault (with)" or even "to nag." Which is where we come to it. The implication is not inherently malicious, per se, but definitely mocking.

"Snide" is more difficult to place: The term first appears in print in 1859 as a cant term meaning "counterfeit," but then soon after with the definition of "cunning, sharp of wit"—one quite reminiscent of the Old English snidan, "to cut"—and, by the 1930s, the modern one: "Insinuating, sneering, slyly derogatory." This is the usual one, and is always a matter of malice.

Exiting "pedant mode," entering "normal mode."

So, yeah, snarking isn't necessarily friendly, but it isn't inherently snide or ill of nature. Friends can be stupid, too, after all!

edited 29th Nov '11 1:48:34 PM by JHM

Dude, snark is a recent coinage, not a loanword from German.

Looking at some of my characters (personal projects/R Ps),

• Sharon: Definitely her savior-complex and absolutely horrendous self-esteem. She doesn't value herself as a person at all, which has led to her many injuries, attempted suicides, and concern from every one of her loved ones she didn't just sort of run away from. Sympathetic flaws admittedly, but flaws nonetheless

• Kali: Definitely a little less sympathetic here. Her main problem is an attitude Memetic Mutation would probably label as "not giving a fuck". Reality dictates however that this is less awesome and more gut-wrenchingly horrible. Kali is the kind of person who laughs at funerals, makes cheesy one-liners to the family at crime scenes, and generally doesn't give a damn about anything other than staying entertained and, preferably, inebriated.

• Michael: Again with the savior complex. He lacks Sharon's self esteem issues, but his morals and sense of justice are just a little too strong. This gets him into horrible, horrible shit when the message finally hits home that he really can't fix everything.

Take it up with the Oxford English Dictionary. Slang? Yes. New? Not at all. The form of the verb meaning to criticise with sarcasm has been in use since at least the late 19th century, though the formation was slightly different: You would "snark" or "snark at" someone rather than "snark on" them, as seems to be of vogue here and now.

Also, Low German isn't the same as German as most people know it. It's a catch-all term for the various transitional dialects between German and Dutch spoken in the northern part of Germany, and generally sounds a lot different from either Standard German or the High German of Bavaria and Austria, with which people are somewhat more familiar.

A lot of words in English are originally from Low German, strangely. Take "luck," for example.

edited 29th Nov '11 2:58:48 PM by JHM

I mention dictionaries because I must assume that's the basis you claim "irregardless" isn't a word, as you provided no other reason to say why it wasn't. And I have yet to see any actual proof but a bit of wordplay that your provided definition even is the established definition, especially when my personal experience, especially as it pertains to characters in books claiming to be snarky or being referred to as snarky in various reviews, by context obviously isn't operating under the narrower definition.

But why do you keep arguing about this? Why does it matter? We are very much off topic, I don't really care if you agree with my definition as long as you know what I mean when I say the word.

"Irregardless" isn't a word because it's pure nonsense; it does not, semantically, mean what it's definition is supposed to mean. Ir- is a negation, so its semantic meaning is actually "opposite of regardless." Does that illustrate why my comment had nothing to do with any dictionary?

^^ In mid-19th century, ''snark'' meant to snort. ''Snarky'', in the early 20th century, meant short-tempered and irritable. Although the shift in meaning to "snide remark" is plausible, I've seen it defined as a portmanteau far more often (albeit not from particularly credible sources). In any case, Oxford Dictionary defines both the verb and the noun using the word "snide."

edited 29th Nov '11 7:57:45 PM by kashchei

To be fair there are a lot of things in the English language, especially idioms and phrases, that if your are looking at just the words that make it up, the phrase makes no sense, or means something that has nothing to do with the actual words.

Not that I'm defending 'irregardless', just saying. The word had never come to my attention before so I don't know much about it.

edited 29th Nov '11 8:45:31 PM by NoirGrimoir

"I could care less" comes to mind, but all of these things are easily attributed to misuse at some point or other. I'm not so much interested in keeping the purity of the language as in avoiding misuse that is patently illogical. That being said, I don't care if "snark" does evolve past the "snide" definition, but I'm not sure what the purpose of that would be. "Sarcasm" covers the concept broadly enough, as far as I can tell.

If you prefer, I'll use the word sarcasm.