The Feature

How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection

Spend some time on the Internet, and you’ll start to see a peculiar usage of the word fail popping up everywhere. A conservative blog posts an image of a United States-Russian diplomatic agreement with the president’s name spelled “Barak Obama” and calls it “White House Spellcheck FAIL.” Atlanta Braves fans take out their ire on outfielder Jeff Francoeur (since traded to the New York Mets) by changing his name to “Failcoeur.” On Twitter, disgruntled CNN-watchers complain about the network’s coverage of protests in Iran under the banner “CNNfail.”