In a fit of selflessness, I have decided that today, I’m going to write a handy primer which could be of importance to anyone over the age of about 20*. Particularly if you ever need to talk to the current under-20s.
Meeping has a worryingly non-descript sound to it. You know what teenagers are like nowadays* — a meep could be anything from some hideous sexual perversion to cutesy slang for covering every inch of someone’s car with gaffer tape. Do you sneak out for a good, hard, meep? Ease into a meeping? Get the gang round for a wild meep-up, maybe?
Well, fortunately, no.
For largely random reasons, ‘meep’ has become a standard filler word for situations where you want to make a noise but not really say anything. It used to be a squeak which indicated surprise or cutesy annoyance, particularly amongst geekier types. (“Here, look at my dragon.” “MEEP!”) It’s mutated a bit since then, though. It’s now a fairly meaningless exclamation, and I suspect that its mainstream popularity is mainly down to the fact that it annoys teachers, parents and other petty tyranny figures. Some groups have an agreed meaning for the word, but in general, it’s just a more spangly version of that other great teen catch-all sound, ‘unh’.
Meep Goes for a Swim #2 by Random Pinkness
But don’t relax just yet. Although various people have made claims for the origin of meep — most commonly blaming Beaker from the Muppets — the disturbing truth is that it seems to have been cosmic horror author H. P. Lovecraft who first used the word. He used it to describe the loathsome noise made by ghouls**, cadaverous subterranean monstrosities whose main pastime was eating the flesh of human corpses.
“Then, just as he was about to creep back from that detestable flame, he saw a stirring among the vague dark forms and heard a peculiar and unmistakable sound. It was the frightened meeping of a ghoul, and in a moment it had swelled to a veritable chorus of anguish.”
– H P Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, 1927.
I find this particularly worrying in light of the Cthulhu Cult’s sudden appearance in the mainstream media after all these years.
Be alert.
Meep by Strange Aeons
* Young, idealistic, comparatively full of energy, that sort of thing.
** They also glibber. Just so you know.
Lo, these many years ago, when I was only a wee Elder God and not the squamous, gibbous ineffable shapelessness I am today, I had a friend who described talking (especially weakly droning on with complaints or worthless chatter) as “meeping and merping”. A perfect description, and one that most people instinctively understand when you use it out of the blue. “What were you and Aunt Bertha talking about?” “Oh, she was meeping and merping about the church bazaar.” “Ah.”