Smol

About

Smol (often paired with lorge or bean), refers to any animal, character, or object that is very tiny and cute. The word is often used as a descriptor or hashtag.

Origin

The origin of smol is currently unknown, but it began appearing on social networks in the late spring / early summer of 2015. An article on Buzzfeed used the term for the title of a list of small animals on May 8th, 2015,^[8] but it’s likely that the origin of the term’s popularity was a fan reference to a musician named Tyler Josephs from the American musical group Twenty One Pilots. Fans began referring to Josephs as a “smol bean” on Tumblr and Twitter.^[1] On June 26th, 2015, Josephs responded, “I am a bean.”^[2] The tweet received over 22,000 retweets and 33,00 favorites over the next two months, with many fans responding “A smol bean.”

Spread

Smol is in wide use on social network platforms. The word was first defined on Urban Dictionary on June 6th, 2015,^[3] and the tumblr MemeDocumentation first wrote about the word on June 29th, 2015, identifying that the word “Lorge” was frequently used in conjunction.^[4] On Tumblr, the search term returns thousands of posts.^[5] According to Topsy analytics, the word has been used on Twitter more than 111,000 times between August 23rd and September 22nd, 2015; however, these numbers are not necessarily representative of true spread, since “smol” has other meanings in other languages, including Serbian.^[6][7] More representative is Vine, where the among the almost 3,000 results, the word is used to on clips of boy bands like One Direction and videos of pets and other animals.^[8] In addition, the word is also employed on fan art, especially on art relating to Steven Universe and Homestuck. There are over 8,600 results on DeviantArt of drawings tagged with the term smol.^[9]

Search Interest

Please note: Smol is both a word in some languages, like Serbian, and a surname, both of which are reflected in these search results.

External References