Blog is one of those words that hardly seems to need a definition since we encounter it as a concept every day. It’s a blog, an online journal of sorts for food or travel or literary analysis or cats. Anything really. But where did this word come from?

It’s quite simple actually and the word seems so much more logical once you consider the etymology. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it comes from the word (drum roll) “weblog.”

A log for the web.

The word weblog came about in 1997, when the Internet first came into its prime, especially with American teenagers. Rather than simply shortening the word back to “log” language users preferred blog, in the age old tradition of English grammar trying to show its etymological origin. The word then became “vlog” with the invention of Youtube, to mean video blog.

Does it fall in line with the previous etymological rules? Not really, but if it really bothers you and you have a camera, I invite you to vlog about it.

By Paulina Harrison