It’s okay if you don’t know what this means. Derp is a feeling, a state of mind. It also stands for Drug Effectiveness Review Project (mmm, spoonful of drugs), which makes total sense. We at Techderp are here to help: read the definition below and then prepare to have your nostrils become pressurized twin beverage cannons when you go visit The Derp Memebase. Ready, aim…
1. The word that describes a particularly retarded face.
2. “Derp is an expression sometimes used online to signify stupidity, much like the earlier forms of “duh” and “dur.” One of the first recorded instances of the term “derp” comes from a short-lived South Park character, Mr. Derp.
Definition #2 is from Know Your Meme, which has this great derp page and is hard at derp researching and evaluating herpa derpiness.
Thanks, Ms. Naughty!
I’d also like to add that after some discussion it should be noted that Trey and Matt (South Park) did not “invent” the herrr and derrr of herp/derp. It’s older than South Park; if you grew up during a certain time in American schools you will remember this.
When making fun of a dorky, klutziness or just for LOLs, kids would smack their shoulder with the back of the hand from the opposite arm and make these noises, leading to fits of laughter. It was how you called someone “retarded,” almost always a friend. Sometimes we’d just do that for no reason until were were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe.
Oh, the wisdom and sensitivity of children.
Hurrr and derrr, and derp, reach back into grade school – at least for us California kids.
I remember it, too. “Der!” was a more common variation where I was from. You would make this strange sort of gesture with your arms that I believe was meant to imitate a severely disabled person, which is to say you would cock your fingers down and act like your wrists were tied to your shoulders and flail around madly going “Derrrrr! Derrrrrr! Derrrrr!” And if you wanted to be really mean you said something like (to your friend John Smith) “Derrrr! Derrrrr! Derrrr!!! My name is John Smith! My name is John Smith! Derrrr!!!!” This was almost a daily occurrence in my grammar school. Somebody was always being mocked or accused of being socially un-anointed by someone else doing the “Der!” routine at them. That was apparently how the kids at my school knew who was fair game to emotionally brutalize that day.
For what it’s worth, I would never do such a thing, because at the time I had a developmentally disabled family member (who has since passed on). I was told in no uncertain terms at an early age by my father that if I used the term “retarded” to mean “stupid” or otherwise mocked the developmentally disabled (who were then called mentally retarded — it was before the DD term was in wide use) that he would NOT be pleased with me. Not pleased at all.
It’s not that I was threatened or anything, it’s just that it was explained to me that compassion toward the disabled was expected out of me, or it would be installed with a hatchet. Well, I may be overstating it, but I did take the lesson to heart and to this day can’t use the term colloquially.
Robert Downey Jr.’s guidelines to Ben Stiller on how to get an Oscar, in Tropic Thunder, however, do make me pee myself laughing, but I believe the derision there is directed toward actors, not the disabled. Actors are, thankfully, still fair game.
hurrr durr derrp dehh derp derpy derpy herpy derr