I love this word. My apologies – I do realize I start a lot of posts that way, but well, heck, this blog is called “bon mots/good words” for a reason. But isn’t this a fun one? It was suggested by a friend. I would not categorize her as snarky, but she hears a lot of snark in her role. I can’t say more than that or I’ll incriminate us both. Most of us tend to know snarky means rudely sarcastic or disrespectful. I like this word, and though it’s really fun to say, you don’t get to use it a lot. That is, you can’t really haul off and call someone snarky to their face, can you? But you can refer to a rude coworker behind their back as snarky. Or maybe a deliciously obnoxious character in a tv program is snarky. I found this fun website, Snarky Malarkey. Remember malarkey? Another fun word. So where does snarky come from? According to the online etymology dictionary, it’s from snark, which is “to snort”, from Low German. Not sure why this amuses me, but it does. I couldn’t resist using the odd “Life with Snarky Parker” comic book cover that I found as the photo for this post. My daughter will get it.
I never heard of the word snarky, until I came to twitter. I noticed that some people actually describe themselves as snarky, thinking it will get them followers. I make it a point NOT to follow people who claim to be snarky. It’s really just a hop, skip and a jump away from mean and malicious.
I hear that. While I like the word, I wouldn’t want it said of me.
Excellent; I do love this word. “Snarky” tends to arouse images of pointy sarcastic snouts, to me, so it’s got a little of the onomatopoeia going on. I think that a while back, some NYT writer penned an article about his hatred of the word snark. I’ve tried to Goog it for 5 minutes, but have nothing. Can anyone else find this story?
Wordlove on with your bonmot self, Sue.
I loooove the image of a pointy sarcastic snout! I will now forever think of that when I hear this word. Will have a look for that NYT article.