It came from the movie Baseketball and then later South Park.
Where did the word and concept of "derpy" come from and where is it going?
Submitted 12 hours ago by cheese_greater@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
remon@ani.social 12 hours ago
nomecks@lemmy.wtf 12 hours ago
ROB SCHNEIDER DERP A DERP A DERPADERP
palordrolap@fedia.io 8 hours ago
It's the onomatopoeia associated with a stupid person trying to think with an emphasis generating -p suffix, in the manner of well → welp and no → nope, then modified further into an adjective with a further -y suffix. Der + -p + -y.
Wiktionary doesn't currently talk about the -p snap suffix at derp, but it does at welp. While I don't quite have the gall to edit it into derp myself, I'm convinced it's the same thing.
(One definition of "herp" is, of course, derived in the same way, doubly emphatic due to the unnecessary aspiration on a hesitation noise. h- + er + -p. Thus was born phrases like "herp-a-derp" for someone acting with a ridiculous lack of care.)
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
How do you mean “where is it going?”
The most recent iteration of “derpy” I’ve heard was in the Kpop Demon Hunters fandom. That’s what fans call the tiger-spirit-thing. I don’t know what its real name is, or if it has one, and I’ve seen the movie three times. At this point I don’t care, its name is Derpy.
If you’re not familiar, it’s a tiger spirit (apparently this is a thing in Korean folklore) and it appears to one of the demon hunter girls, and after initially appearing scary, it knocks over a planter, and proceeds to try to right the planter before proceeding. After several failed attempts, the girl intervenes and sets the planter right… only for the tiger to knock it over again and again attempt to right it. (It’s not a scary scene. Everyone loves the tiger.)
ieatpwns@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Just saw the movie yesterday and that tiger creeped me out. That 1000 yard stare reminded me of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in wonderland
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
Yeah, I think it was meant to. Maybe the origins are same/similar.
Fun trivia: Isekai is a Japanese genre that means “trapped in another world.” Sword Art Online made it popular but it wasn’t the first, even in Japan. The idea of being trapped in a video game goes at least back to Tron in the 1980s. SAO was itself a revamp/remake of an older anime called .hack//SIGN — not officially, but it shared way too many details with that decade-older show. (The books were written around the time it was airing, but the show would have been green-lit almost a decade later, knowing there was a very similar show already out. And the same people worked on it, made the music, made the games, so yeah, similar DNA in both.) But the first isekai may have actually been Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Isekai has western origins, Japan just gave it a simple name. And now it seems like there are dozens of isekai (word is the same singularly and plurally) coming out every year, and most of them suck. But isekai is everywhere. Stephen King has written isekai — The Dark Tower, The Talisman, 11/22/63, Fairy Tale, and probably more.
memfree@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
Know Your Meme credits the movie Baseketball.
ikidd@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I honestly predicted that “derp” would be taken up in slang when that show came out For one of the few times in my life, I was right.