BABY Reindeer could follow the phrase “gaslighting” from the screen into popular use, experts say.
The title of the Netflix smash has already been adapted as the phrase “baby reindeered” to refer to someone being victimised.
Social media is rife with examples. One X user said: “I’m literally being baby reindeered.”
Tony Thorne, a language consultant at King’s College London, said:
“It’s not surprising if people take a current reference from news, pop culture or entertainment to use as slang.
“Kids use ‘to Brexit’ to mean make a blunder, and just recently people have said ‘I got completely sunak’d’ when soaked by sudden rain.”
He said the term ‘gaslighting’ which is now widely used to mean tricking a partner into believing that they are deluded comes from the title of a 1944 Hollywood movie.
He added: “So it’s not a complete surprise if some people are announcing that they’ve been ‘baby reindeered’ if they feel – or more probably pretend – that they are being stalked.
“In fact I had already recorded ‘doing a Martha’ to describe an obsessive stalker’s activities several days ago.”
But, he said it was difficult to predict which pop culture phrases would remain in use.
He added: “These phrases may catch on and stay in the language, but many are soon forgotten and people coming across them in the future will be baffled by them: even expert linguists can’t be sure which will stick and which will disappear.”
Elizabeth Dunne, an English language and linguistics expert, said people use metaphors like this as a shortcut to explaining complex ideas through shared experience.
She added: “We use language to bond over shared concepts and understanding, and films and TV shows have been a huge global cultural phenomenon for the past 100 years or so, and consequently aspects of them have entered common parlance.
“We could easily see the same happen with ‘baby reindeered’.”
Fiona Harvey sent Sir Keir bizarre lockdown videos
FIONA Harvey sent Sir Keir Starmer bizarre videos in which she moaned about neighbours during lockdown.
She filmed herself walking round her flat with Sky News on as she claimed she was the only one clapping for NHS workers.
In a typically badly-spelt message she wrote: “Hundreds of people live round here.
“The Bengali mafia the air B and B mafia etc etc Noone clappedc”
She also sent Sir Keir and others an email with a video of a man appearing to stack items on the pavement near her flat.
Fiona Harvey also launched into vicious email rants about murdered MP Jo Cox and TV presenter Kate Garraway’s late husband Derek Draper in her emails.
The Scottish Sun has chosen not to publish the content of the appalling messages.
Richard Gadd, 35, of from Wormit, Fife, wrote the show about his ordeal at the hands of a stalker based on events the show states are “real”.
Fiona Harvey, 58, from Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, has since vowed to sue Netflix, saying the character Martha, the stalker, was based on her.
Last month, The Scottish Sun exclusively revealed Harvie had bombarded Sir Keir Starmer with hundreds of chilling messages.
She told the Labour leader he was in a “non-job”, was a “stupid little boy” and a “useless barrister”.
Harvey threatened to make Sir Keir’s life “not worth living”.
She even called the PM hopeful’s wife “ugly” in a vicious tirade.
