I'm only going to speak in animated gifs in this thread. ;)

[Hans_Lauring]

That catch wins sinnick the Thread Cop Badge of Honor!

Except that I’m pretty sure both of his has been posted before as well. They’re certainly old.
(and yes, I’m too lazy to check to prove my point)

[Jasper_Phillips]

OK, Mr. Language Person, defend this:

Ahem!

Too much D&D for me it seems; Phase Spiders on the brain. That or too much Star Fleet Battles!

[Jasper_Phillips]

Actually, I had to look that up, it looked weird to me too, but one of the definitions of grovel in the dictionary is indeed "to creep with the face to the ground : crawl. "

I am much more used to “the to humble oneself or act in an abject manner, as in great fear or utter servility.” definition.

I’d argue pedantically sifting through a hundred old pages of thread for a .gif counts as both definitions. ;-)

[JMR]

[BrianRubin]

Which game is that, JMR?

[dermot]

‘For fuck’s sa- hang on while I go and let Mr. Lazy through’

[Alistair]

It’s BF3.

[TranquilityBase]

You know a game is buggy when even the AI has to work around the glitches.

[kerzain]

Maybe it’s just easier to program the AI to work around glitches, than it is to just fix the glitch.

[WhollySchmidt]

Which game is that, JMR?

Harry Potter.

[BrianRubin]

Harry Potter.

You have a fucking problem?

[MattKeil]

No, that’s a fairly well established use. You just haven’t been exposed to it because you spend too much time playing computer games. :-P

No, I’m pretty sure even the “creep on one’s face” definition doesn’t describe what LK was doing. I may play a lot of videogames, but I have spent roughly an equal amount of time reading over the last 33 years and I have never once encountered “grovel” used in that manner.

I’d bet the majority of the rest of the posters here can figure out pretty much exactly what I meant.

I understand what you meant, but there are five other words that fit what you were trying to say without torturing a third-tier definition of “grovel” to the breaking point.

[Miramon]

I’ve seen “grovel” used that way many times.

Obviously it’s a solecism, but it’s not uncommon, especially among hackers describing a program or by extension, anything else. A program might “grovel” through a data structure to find a key – it’s some combination of “trawl” and “search” with connotations of manual tedium or inefficiency, no doubt used because a word like “scrabble” didn’t come to mind or didn’t feel quite right.

Of course it’s a usage that can easily be done without as the word doesn’t really have that meaning at all, properly speaking.

[Jason_Townsend]

I didn’t want to wade in on this but I’m not believing that’s a valid use of grovel without some solid examples and/or OED entries. I can maybe believe it’s a malapropism-cum-jargon among some hackers or something but I’m really not sure if that counts for anything, not to be proscriptive language rules guy.

[Miramon]

I didn’t want to wade in on this but I’m not believing that’s a valid use of grovel without some solid examples and/or OED entries.

It’s definitely completely invalid. It’s just that it’s not a unique usage.

[TranquilityBase]

[arctangent]

[ZekeDMS]

I’ve seen “grovel” used that way many times.

Never seen it once in my life, and I fully reject is as much as the people using any form of txtspk or the incorrect uses of their/your. Just because people do it doesn’t make it okay or anything short of incredibly stupid.

[Lizard_King]

No, I’m pretty sure even the “creep on one’s face” definition doesn’t describe what LK was doing. I may play a lot of videogames, but I have spent roughly an equal amount of time reading over the last 33 years and I have never once encountered “grovel” used in that manner.

That wassinnick. What I was doing was pedantry after the fact.

[BrianRubin]

Hahaha, fantastic.