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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

Blogistan en · PROPN

Etymology

From c. 2001 (see quotations), formed from blog + -istan.

Meanings

  1. (informal) Blogs of Iran (where the suffix -stan originated) and nearby regions.
    • Blogistan is a newer coinage, appearing after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. By attacking to blog the suffix -stan, which means "land" or "place of" in Farsi and related languages, the word successfully conveys the idea that blogs in Blogistan are concerned with matters in the Stans, among them Afghanistan and Pakistan. [2006, Grant Barrett, “Tongue in Groove: The Blogistan Lexicon”, in The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang:
  2. (informal) Blogs, collectively.
    • The Boston Globe's Alex Beam dismisses the blogosphere with typical liberal hauteur: "Welcome to Blogistan, the Internet-based journalistic medium where no thought goes unpublished, no long-out-of-print book goes unhawked, and no fellow 'blogger,' no matter how outré, goes unpraised." 2006, Joan Gorham, Mass Media, page 34: