One of the traits I have found in the fanboy is the desire to legitimize all of his silly, usually childish, interests. Now he’s been legitimized, as the word ‘fanboy’ itself has been added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, one of a hundred new words ushered into the hallowed pages this year.
Possibly most surprising is the fact that Merriam-Webster marks the first use of ‘fanboy’ as being in 1919, but only secondarily surprising is that the definition sort of… sucks. Here it is:
boy who is an enthusiastic devotee, such as of comics or movies.
Really? So that leaves women out. And I think it also doesn’t quite capture the frightening, pathetic je ne sais qua that fanboys have about them, let alone the stench. But maybe I’m alone in finding ‘fanboy’ to be a pejorative.
Meanwhile, the movie Fanboys remains unreleased. Maybe the addition of the word to the official lexicon is what the Weinsteins need to finally get the thing dumped into theaters.