grilf

//, n.

Girlfriend. Like newsfroup and filk, a typo reincarnated as a new word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1990 on Usenet. [A friend tells me there was a Lloyd Biggle SF novel Watchers Of The Dark, in which alien species after species goes insane and begins to chant “Grilf! Grilf!”. A human detective eventually determines that the word means “Liar!” I hope this has nothing to do with the popularity of the Usenet term. —ESR]