• E-mail this page
• |  Print this page
• | 
• | 
• | 

'Brick' Enters Formal English Lexicon As Slang For A Useless iPhone

Did you ever think you would read the word 'brick' so many times in one week? Not only is it a noun (this brick used to be an iPhone), but it is also a verb (he bricked his iPhone), and adjective (that bricked iPhone doesn't work). It also happens to be a town (yo, shout out to New Jersey). It has yet to become a curse word (Brick you!).

The brick has been around for a long time. Originally made of straw and mud, eventually it became a fired, rectangular block of clay used to make buildings. They are used because they are strong and sturdy and can bear great weight.

Reading its definition in the dictionary, I discovered there have been some great, colorful uses of the word over time.

"A brick short of a load."

"Hit a brick wall."

"Like a ton of bricks."

I think my all-time favorite use of the word has something do to with human waste products and isn't entirely appropriate for this blog. It also sort of fell out of favor about 10 years ago.

But I love how the English language works. Words can catch fire sometimes. No other word has caught fire in recent memory such as the word 'brick'. I can't be certain who was the first to refer to a non-operational iPhone as a brick, but I am sure it was a writer for or reader of some tech blog somewhere in the blogosphere.

I first saw it in reference to the iPhone some time in August, around the time the first Apple 1.0.1 iPhone software update became available. Since then it has fully caught on, and even been used by the New York Times. If the word brick--with its current, popular connotation of a useless, inoperable iPhone--has been used thus by the Grand Dame of U.S. newspapers, surely its definition in Webster's needs to be updated.

Now only if we could build something out of all those bricks...

« Is It Wrong To Tweak Your Device? | Main | The Less Visible CIO: A (Software) CEO's Perspective »