Word of the day

[Ghoulish Delight]

An odd bit of Wikipedia free-association brought me to this word:

Shibboleth - any language usage indicative of one's social or regional origin, or more broadly, any practice that identifies members of a group.

It is from Hebrew, the word means "stream" or "torrent", but it's literal meaning isn't the important part. It's all about the pronunciation. Depending on your dialect of Hebrew, the first and last sounds in the word are "sh" and "th" respectively OR "s" and "t". In modern times, those are the differences between Ashkenazi (eastern European) and Sephardic (western European/Iberian) Jews. In biblical times, the word Shibboleth was used to identify infiltrators from neighboring tribes. If they couldn't pronounce the "sh" and "th" naturally, they were obviously outsiders.

The context I saw this word used in was a discussion of the history of internet trolling. One of the earliest forms was "trolling for newbies" in which a veteran of usenet would post some tired topic (say, "Do you like DCA?") in order to get newbies not in on the joke to expose themselves. A shibboleth, if you will.