Kristian (a really bright and interesting guy) from IDEO and a bunch of us had a laugh when he told us about T9nonyms. He then went ahead and made a page on Wikipedia (link below).
I’ve added a list of my own. Feel free to add more!
Link: T9onym – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A T9onym is a word that shows up on mobile phones that have T9 text entry that is equivalent through T9 to other words. T9onyms appear by pressing number keys while in T9 mode. For example, Bus and Cup are T9onyms. Other examples are If and He, Book and Cook, Sophie and Roshi. T9onyms can usually be reviewed and selected by placing the cursor at the end of the word and pressing the * (star) key to select an alternate T9onym. T9onyms are slang for those words generated through T9, in general these are referred to as textonyms.
From the WikiPedia page – “And T9nonyms are creeping into slang: some kids in London are calling things book as a T9nonym for cool.”
Lor’ luv a duck! Sounds like a new spin on Cockney Rhymin’ Slang ter me. Know what I mean? – Dave
Have you heard about this expression before today? I wrote about something I called Tynonyms on my site in November last year.
http://brilliantdays.com/tynonym/
I was just wondering if the word T9onym existed BEFORE that. The Wikipedia entry did not, as it was created in January 2007.
Oyvind,
Yes, we only made the entry last week – originally from Kristian. But, there were other folks already referring to this around the same time you were (see link 1 in article, from june06).
I really don’t know who’s first. But, lots of times the same things pop up at the same time from different quarters.
One thing, if a distinction can be made, we are talking about real words with the same T9 keys. You seem to be more pointing to the humor of the nonsensicle ‘synonyms’. That’s a bit different.
Maybe a ‘T9nonym’ can be a real word that shows up in the T9 sequence. A ‘Tynonym’ can be a funny combination of letters, not necessarily a real work, for example ‘typhoi’ that T9 sometimes brings up.
🙂
Vagat,
(tynonym for ‘tchau’)
I’m actually talking about real words too, but just puzzled by some of the funny words the mobile suggest sometimes. I would agree that the term should refer to REAL words, not funny words like typhoi.