It’s not operative. It’s opposition.
Comment on I feel old
PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee 7 months agoIt’s “opp” with two p’s but it’s short for “operative”, a word with one p? I’m starting to think that you don’t really know either.
Fluffy_Ruffs@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Vespair@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Yeah and “rizz” comes from charisma but isn’t spelled “riz.”
And “OP” has multiple existing potential meanings still in common use today, so it makes sense to me to spell it with flair for the sake of clarity.
Slang is complex and morphs as it travels though; so do some folks use opp as “opponent”? Sure, that’s believable. But I feel fairly confident (never fully confident; I am fallible after all) that it’s original use comes from AAVE and more specifically hip-hop, where I again feel pretty damn confident it refers to an operative and not an opponent.
If I am wrong though, I would love to be corrected (with some verification of some kind) so I can be sure to reconcile the new info and not spread misinformation again. I’ll happily await your evidence to that end.
Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Bro, it doesn’t even have the right number of P’s for your reasoning to make any sense.
It comes from “opponent,” that’s why there are two P’s. It comes from video games/chess/card games/etc where you refer to the person or persons you’re playing against as the “opponent”. It’s been happening for many years but has made it’s way into gen z slang.
Vespair@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Perhaps there’s a case of parallel development here, but I really don’t think that’s what happened.
Gamer slang has long borrowed, sometimes sincerely sometimes ironically, from AAVE and hip-hop slang, where I truly believe this originates, and clearly has the cop/fed connotation. Yeah, I know people shorthand “opp” as opponent in games in the same way they shorthand everything, but jesus christ that’s more approaching 1337 5p35k customs than gen z slang, so even if we do assume parallel development and concede opp=opponent in modern gamer slang it almost certainly is pretty unrelated to said archaic use and was likely homespun in zoomer/alpha games like Roblox or Amung Us or whatever they’re playing now instead.
But hey, while I remain unconvinced I am proud to accept my fallibility and ask everyone to remember that I am just some stranger online when weighing the weight of my opinion and to draw your own conclusion on the matter. I do not claim to speak gospel.