The Straight Dope Message Board is an oasis in my day, a place where I can read thoughtful opinions from intelligent, literate fellow citizens of the world.
But lately this “word” keeps popping up: “Squee!” Sometimes it is followed but more than one exclamation point. Why is this happening?
All right – all you folks who have been saying or writing this, this thing . . . what the fuck does it mean? I don’t even know what it means, but it sounds like something a half-bright 13-year-old girl might write. I’m irritated both by the stupid term and by my own ignorance, which I wish to have ameliorated, Goddamnit!
And I want you to answer without using a single slang term. Just tell me, in standard English, exactly what “squee” means when you use it. What are the conditions for the use of that term in a sentence? (The best rule-of-thumb definition of “definition” I know.)
I put this in the Pit so that I could curse and use words like “moronic”. And since it is the Pit, feel free to curse me back. Thank you.
It’s meant to be used as a one-word sentence, which is probably about all those who use it can handle. I take it as some sort of girlish squeal of delight. It’s extremely irritating.
Close. ‘Squee’ is the sound a half-bright 13-year-old girl would make when excited about something. It would often be accompanied by hand-clapping and jumping up & down.
It’s like “LOL! LOL!” and all the rest of that tribe.
sigh
Not as irritating as hearing half-a-busload of high-pitched tennaged female voices at full volume, but … not something I’d use. Unless it was the sound effect for something cute and furry being stepped on.
Oh dear me. I always thought it was the noise made by a 16 wheeler leviathan, in the seconds just before it impacted heavily with a half-busload of teenagers.
Oh please. You’re just trying to cheer me up. After travelling 7 miles with said half-busload of female “squeeing” teenagers, I’d probably welcome the leviathan to put us all out of our misery.
So very, very close. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. JTHM is the centerpoint title of a number of comics by Jhonen Vasquez (who also created Invader Zim). The others are Squee (about Nny’s neighbour, Squee - so named for the fact that he frequently lets out said noise in fear), and I Feel Sick (about Devi, a young woman Nny had a less than successful date with).
And that brings us back to ‘squee’ - it’s a general noise of incoherent excitement. Vasquez’s Squee usually squeed in terror, but most squeeing outside that is in joy. It’s onomatopoeia for a scream - girly, but not actually necessarily emitted by a girl* - usually in reaction to seeing something cute, or having something really good happen to you, or suchlike things.
In fact, the girly glee embodied in the squee is more striking when it’s not a young girl doing it.
